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Doc,

Thank you for another demonstration that your posts are autistic, not engaging what I'm actually saying but simply pursuing your own, unrelated agenda. I'll henceforth dutifully ignore them.

Don

DonBradley wrote:Doc,

Thank you for another demonstration that your posts are autistic, not engaging what I'm actually saying but simply pursuing your own, unrelated agenda. I'll henceforth dutifully ignore them.

Don

Hey Don,

I don't have authism like doc cam. In case you missed it

DoubtingThomas wrote:

DonBradley wrote:
You know I don't view Joseph Smith as a charlatan, so in phrasing it that way, you're not trying to represent my views at all.

If you want to ignore the actual issue and just take potshots at me, I'll ignore your posts and let you continue to talk to yourself.

Hi Don!

I don't necessarily view Joseph Smith as a charlatan because I don't have a position. Perhaps he was a Pious fraud, perhaps he had some multiple personality disorder, perhaps he was a prophet of God, or perhaps he really was just a charlatan hoaxer. No one knows what was in his mind.

To me a more important question is: Why do you believe in God and Joseph Smith? Is it because of some religious experience? Is it because you believe that God is an alien and Mormonism makes sense? Is it because of Pascal's Wager? Is it because you see a lot of similarities between transhumanism and Mormonism?

Why do you need Mormonism? How is Mormonism better than secular humanism? How is the spirit of God different from the spirit of Chritmas?

Have you read about cognitive biases? Have you read The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen by Dr. Hand? Or the Illusion of God's presense by neurologist Dr. Wathey? What are your thoughts?
Sorry for asking a lot

By the way, I do like Mormon Transhumanism

Grindael,

You present your statements on the "Egyptian Alphabet" so one-sidedly and as if we've never discussed the Egyptian Alphabet before and as if you're unaware of the evidence that the GAEL is, in fact, the Egyptian Alphabet spoken of. For a sound refutation of your arguments, I invite you and anyone else to search the archives for Kinderhook Plates. I don't have time to repeat the same conversation with you about that again.

I'll respond to some of what's new here before I bow out. But I don't want to continue the same old discussion.

grindael wrote:And there is something that Don's comparison doesn't account for. Clayton wrote,

Prest J. has translated a portion and says they contain the history of the person with whom they were found, and he was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharoah king of Egypt, and that he received his kingdom from the Ruler of heaven and earth.

Joseph says they contain "the history of the person with whom they were found". How would he know this? Where did he get the context for that statement?

Since bones were found with the plates, I would chalk that up to something they could have easily inferred--i.e., that there was a connection between the person mentioned in the record and the person the records were buried with. That's hardly a leap. It's what one might expect.

But even if we say that the GAEL "only" explains 80% of the content of Joseph Smith's translation, that would still be 80% more than you can explain by comparing the text to the Book of Mormon, which doesn't speak of descendants of Pharaoh and such at all.

The definition for the symbol/grapheme that Don says is a match says:

Ha-e-oop-hah – Honor by birth, kingly power, by the line of Pharaoh. possession by birth, one who reigns upon his throne universally, possessor of heaven and earth and of the blessings of the earth.

To get anything about Ham, one must also include this symbol/grapheme

Ho-e-oop – A prince of the royal blood – a true descendant of Ham the son of Noah, and inheritor of the Kingly blessings from under the hand of Noah, but not according to the priestly blessings, because of the transgressions of Ham, which blessing fall upon Shem from under the hand of Noah.

Don does not account for this second symbol, (grapheme) but still includes the description that goes with it, a descendant of Ham because it is on the same page in the GAEL.

Now you're being silly. I make no appeal to that character definition at all and never have. The Book of Abraham has already said that Pharaoh is a descendant of Ham, so to Joseph Smith to be a descendant of Pharaoh just is to be a descendant of Ham. To say one is a descendant of Pharaoh is to say implicitly that one is descendant of Ham, just like to say that one is a descendant of Jacob is to say implicitly that one is a descendant of Abraham. Nothing more need be added to the ho-e-oop-hah definition to get the idea that the person spoken of was a descendant of Ham. It's already there, just the same as how if it said 2 plus 2 it would already be saying 4. And you're more than smart enough to get that if you'd lay aside the polemical approach you're taking here.

Neither mention receiving their kingdom from "the RULER of heaven and earth". They would have received their kingdom by birth right and it says that they (the one who has the kingly power) WAS the "possessor of heaven and earth and the blessings of the earth." Is that the same as the RULER of Heaven and Earth?

It's not the same word, but this is a quibble.

If your explanation of Joseph Smith's Kinderhook plates translation is so great, why can't you lay out an explanation of the content that explains any of the wording instead of quibbling over how mine gets as close as "ruler of heaven and earth" is to "possessor of heaven and earth"?

We know that Joseph saw the plates and "translated a portion" on the 1st of May. It was a week later before he did some comparisons.

Again, you're being silly. Joseph Smith does a public exhibition of both sets of characters side by side on May 7, and from that you're assuming that he has made no comparisons until that public exhibition. I'm not saying and never have said that the comparison Joseph Smith does on May 7 somehow translates the KP text on May 1. I'm saying the May 7 comparison shows that Joseph Smith DID compare the two sets of characters, making it all the more likely that his May 1 translation was done by that means.

But what was he comparing? A Gentile/Emmons says it was the Book of Mormon Caractors.

Please read our past conversations.

How do we know that Joseph didn't "translate" the KP initially by "revelation" and then later saw the similarities with the GAEL?

Because the reported translation content could be derived from the GAEL pretty easily - by one character comparison and a rather obvious surmise that the record buried with someone has something to do with them. Your theory makes it look like something miraculous happens here--JS translates by revelation and then--wow!--the GAEL just happens to render that same content.

And however Joseph Smith claimed to "translate" the Kinderhook plates he came up with the claimed translation text somehow - through some process--even if that process was just inside his head. My explanation gives a pretty simple process by which that text was rendered, and yours doesn't. And that's the difference between them. Mine actually EXPLAINS something. That's why I hold to it.

Yours [i]doesn't explain the translation content. So, why in the world, given that there's an alternative explanation that does explain it, do you persist in rejecting that explanation and going with the non-explanation? Is it simple stubbornness? Are you so eager to have better ammunition against Mormonism that actually explaining the historical phenomena in question will always have to take a backseat?

That is just as valid a premise as Don's. Joseph's apostles linked the "translation" to the Jaredites or the Book of Mormon.

Again, we've discussed this like seven times. Simply ignoring the evidence I've laid out on this before may fool readers who aren't familiar with that evidence, but it shouldn't fool you. Why are you simply leaving out what I've actually argued and then pretending to do a "gotcha" where you've supposedly refuted me? Check the archives.

Emmons did say "Egyptian Alphabet" but he clarified what he meant by it, the Book of Mormon characters. Don has to excise that to make his theory work,

“A Gentile,” saying that Joseph Smith “compared the Kinderhook plates, in my presence, with his Egyptian Alphabet… and they are evidently the same characters. He therefore will be able to decipher them.”

He simply ellipses out the material that clarifies what Emmons meant: "his Egyptian Alphabet WHICH HE TOOK FROM THE PLATES FROM WHICH THE Book of Mormon WAS TRANSLATED, and they are evidently the same characters. (Same as the Book of Mormon characters).

In my writings I do quote this and I explain how a self-acknowledged Gentile would not necessarily know the differences between various works of Mormon scripture. And, in fact, I even argue that Joseph Smith may have shown Emmons et al. both the GAEL and Book of Mormon characters, contributing to the conflation.

What's more, some poster here named GRINDAEL, once argued that "A Gentile" was actually a covert Mormon and therefore would have known the Book of Mormon/Book of Abraham distinction quite well - implicitly acknowledging with that argument that an actual Gentile, such as Emmons was, may not have caught the distinction.

Yet now when it's clear that Emmons was an actual Gentile, you've changed your tune, and suddenly it's obvious that although Emmons was a Gentile he couldn't possibly have made such a mistake! What seems reasonable to you varies depending on how well or poorly it supports your pre-chosen position.

And, if we're to go into supposedly withholding relevant evidence, you, for your part, simply refuse to tell your readers that "Egyptian Alphabet" is a name we know was used for the GAEL, that we know the May 7 group was comparing the KP characters to papyrus characters--i.e., the ones in the GAEL, etc., etc., etc. You're completely stilted--ALWAYS-- in your presentation of the evidence and then concerned that I used an ellipsis in one place in my article even though I laid out the ellipsed comment and discussed it elsewhere in the same piece.

Richards said Hebrew Bible and LEXICON, not Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar.[/i]

Which you know I've discussed my evidence on but choose to ignore

It was about the Jaredites

Which again you know I've discussed but choose to ignore.

Since early Mormons believed that only Israelites and Jaredites populated ancient America, and since neither those Israelites weren't descendants of Pharaoh, that would have left only one group for the Kinderhook plates to be associated with--which is the Jaredites. The logic here is elementary school simple: To them, the creators of the KPs would have had to be A (Israelites) or B (Jaredites), and the text translated via the GAEL ruled out A, leaving only B.

If elementary logic is too much for you to acknowledge, I give up.

And then there is Brigham Young who was at Joseph's house on May 3, and traced one of the plates. He later said (In Sept. 1842), "Is their wisdom in Zion? We think so & the world begin to think so. Let the world come forward & translate the plates that have of late come forth if they have wisdom to do it." Brigham Young expected Joseph to translate the KP with an unfinished Egyptian Grammar?

Come on. You yourself claim that the GAEL is product of Joseph Smith's revelations. If so, it obviously counts as revelatory 'wisdom in Zion'

I'll acknowledge this, Grindael:

Your arguments are getting better. They're more precise, you're thinking them through more, and you're doing a better job of collecting the rough edges on my arguments together into a composite case.

But you're still ignoring my arguments that have already dealt with the supposed anomalies in my explanations, which isn't fair or good scholarship.

And at best even your improved arguments aren't near good enough. They don't offer a better explanation. They take potshots at what is still a far better explanation than what you have to offer.

What does a good historical explanation look like to you? 'Cause I just don't "get" why you want to go with an explanation that fails to do what an explanation does--explain!--instead of one that actually does explain.

When all the papers have been published and all the Internet discussions have been had, when the dust settles from all this argument, you're going to have lost - because you're not explaining the origin of the Kinderhook plates translation text or why it's so similar to the definition of a GAEL character that shows up on those same plates. Instead, you're like, Wow, look, it's an amazing coincidence that Joseph Smith's revealed text is so damn similar to this GAEL text!

Your emphasis on the idea that Joseph Smith probably did present Book of Mormon characters for comparison with the Kinderhook plates characters could make a fantastic adjunct to the GAEL explanation for the origin of the translation text. In fact, it already does. I've adopted it based on your arguments and acknowledged its probable truth to the world in print. I think you're right that Joseph Smith probably compared Book of Mormon characters to the KP characters along with the GAEL characters.

On that, you've already won. Yet, strangely, you seem to refuse to accept your victory and insist on continuing to fight a losing battle over the origin of the KP translation text, which is already well explained by the GAEL connection.

You could be helping flesh out a fuller picture of Joseph Smith's engagement with Kinderhook plates, showing the role that the Book of Mormon characters played alongside the role that the GAEL played. That would be a very reasonable and worthwhile contribution to our historical understanding of the Kinderhook plates incident. But if you want to stand your ground in a losing battle till the bitter end instead...

I really don't get it, Grindael.

In any case, we are both hitting our heads against a wall here. You can't explain the translation text like the GAEL theory can, and I can't convince you that you've already won an important battle and should accept and build on that victory instead of fighting this other losing battle instead.

I get more emotionally involved in these discussions, I think, than you do. And I actually tend to write my posts rather slowly, which means it takes up a lot of time I could be putting toward finishing my book. I will probably need to start weaning myself from the board again and take off.

Don

DonBradley wrote:Doc,

Thank you for another demonstration that your posts are autistic, not engaging what I'm actually saying but simply pursuing your own, unrelated agenda. I'll henceforth dutifully ignore them.

Don

Could we not bring autism into the commentary please?

Hell.

DonBradley wrote:by the way, I answered a question from one poster that then leads to another question from that poster. Answered that and that then leads to a comment and implicit question from another poster. Answered that and then that leads to questions from two posters, which when answered leads to yet another question. This could apparently continue ad infinitum, but I will probably get tired of it real quick.

Lemmie wrote:Funny how discussion boards work like that, isn't it? Some would even consider it a positive feature! (Maybe you don't realize how this paragraph reads to someone who has been following this thread and enjoying the conversation.)

DonBradley wrote:I first got on message boards in 1996. I know something of their dynamics. The sort of conversation that's meant to challenge anything I say has only occurred for me here since my return to Mormonism. It isn't the normal dynamic at all.

That's very interesting for you! Not sure why you consider it necessary to make that response to what I said (which was only meant to be a gentle hint that you were being unnecessarily offensive), but it does explain considerably your approach to posting. It's unfortunate you had no challenging conversations here during your non-Mormon time, my condolences. Luckily, I have not had such a boring experience here! Please don't feel it necessary to respond again; I am enjoying very much the technical discussion, so let's just leave it at that.

Jersey Girl wrote:Could we not bring autism into the commentary please?

Hell.

Please.

Dan wrote:I will probably need to start weaning myself from the board again and take off.

Godspeed.

Yes, Don. I'm an autist.

So sorry you're not lavished with praise for posting on a discussion board. You're so brave! I mean the way you don't answer questions with facts, but rather with assertions based wholly on twisting your brains into knots to make some minute point that kinda sorta fits into your version of Mormon theology is amazing. Funny how the moment someone calls your crap out you suddenly are feeling tired and need a break from discussing things Mormon on a Mormon discussion board.

Carry on pounding the crap out of your square peg into that round hole, friendo.

- Doc

DoubtingThomas wrote:Hey Don,

I don't have authism like doc cam. In case you missed it

Doubting Thomas,

You're right. I should be responding to you, since you do engage what I say instead of to posters who don't engage what I say.

DoubtingThomas wrote:To me a more important question is: Why do you believe in God and Joseph Smith? Is it because of some religious experience? Is it because you believe that God is an alien and Mormonism makes sense? Is it because of Pascal's Wager? Is it because you see a lot of similarities between transhumanism and Mormonism?

Any kind of adequate answer would be ridiculously long and complex, because wrestling with religion, and especially Mormonism, is much of what I've spent my life doing. I've literally poured tens of thousands of hours into my research and grappling. That and raising good kids are most of what I've done on the planet.

I gave a very limited answer to these questions, but perhaps about as good as I could have done under the time constraints I had, in my 2012 "Pillars of My Faith" talk at Sunstone: https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pillar ... aith-2012/ . To compress my journey into 40 minutes required simplifying to the point of greatly oversimplifying. I'll need to be still briefer here, but please don't take the simplicity of what I say to mean that there isn't complexity in the worldview I hold and the path that has gotten me to it.

I believe in God in part because of cosmology, including both physics arguments indicating that time had a beginning and observations on the "fine-tuning" of the universe. I also believe in part because human beings around the world and across cultures have had religious experiences that point to some kind of Ultimate reality, and because I've had religious experiences myself.

One of these experiences stands out from the rest because it had objectively testable content and, indeed, saved my life. I am here today because I was given a warning that anticipated a dangerous event I was about to encounter but that I couldn't have personally foreseen.

These are only some of the specific reasons that I believe in God.

Ultimately, I believe in God because my theistic model of reality makes better sense of the universe and my life experience than a non-theistic model has.

The deep connections of Mormonism and transhumanism definitely impacted my decision to return to Mormonism. In fact, partly for that reason I chose to be rebaptized into Mormonism by my friend Lincoln Cannon, founding visionary of the Mormon Transhumanist Association.

Why do you need Mormonism? How is Mormonism better than secular humanism? How is the spirit of God different from the spirit of Chritmas?

In some senses I don't "need" Mormonism. I lived as an atheist, a Baha'i, and a non-Mormon Christian, and I found many satisfactions in life during each of those stages. It would be accurate to state that atheist was the least satisfying of those, in part since I had an unmet spiritual hunger then and because I lacked a sense of ultimate meaning. But, again, in some senses I obviously don't "need" Mormonism.

That said, I find much in Mormonism that it is tremendously inspiring and also much that reveals a deep and profound complexity consistent with a divine intelligence working with Joseph Smith. Mormonism enhances the purposefulness with which I live and gives me not only a community to be part of but also a community I can contribute to.

For an example of things from Mormonism that I find inspiring, here's a paper I completed while outside of the LDS church: "'The Grand Fundamental Principles of Mormonism': Joseph Smith's Unfinished Reformation": https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/141-32-41.pdf

Why religion over secular humanism?

In part, obviously, because I actually think there is a God. Beyond that...

After leaving Mormonism, I was an atheist, and even, following Sam Harris's lead, a "new atheist." But I encountered increasing evidence that religion was actually good for people. I initially resisted it and thought I could explain it in other ways. But ultimately I had to accept that if I was going to follow the evidence when I saw it leading to the conclusion that religion wasn't true, I would need to follow the evidence again when it told me that religion, regardless of whether it was true, was good for people.

I later came to perceive greater actual truth in religion as well, but regardless of that, the evidence for religion's value to human beings is immense. And one of the areas where this value is clearest is in religion's power to build social capital (- for more on this, see Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone.)

Religion is humankind's most powerful social technology. Religion binds human beings together into communities and cooperative ventures more powerfully than any alternative yet developed.

Secular humanism sucks at building community. When participation in a group is just a matter of personal preference, rather than of religious devotion, commitment to the common good tends to be low, and people tend to leave the group rather easily. So a largely secular humanist religious fellowship like Unitarian Universalism (in which I have some personal experience) tends to be a revolving door, not the kind of lifetime, intense commitment to a community that theistic religion so often is.


The spirit of God vs. the spirit of Christmas? Well, again, I believe there actually is a God. And I don't see the spirit of Christmas as the kind of 'thing' that can offer a life-saving warning.

Have you read about cognitive biases? Have you read The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen by Dr. Hand? Or the Illusion of God's presense by neurologist Dr. Wathey? What are your thoughts?

I have not read those exact books, but I have read others in the same areas, including books specifically on cognitive biases. In about 1996 or 1997 I first read Thomas Gilovich's How We Know What Isn't So. I was so influenced by Gilovich's work that I came to call myself an "apostle" for this book, recommending it to people all the time in discussions. Soon thereafter I read Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini's Inevitable Illusions. These are both excellent primers on cognitive biases and heuristics. I've also read journal articles on specific topics in cognitive biases by Gilovich and by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. I've also read most of Jonathan Baron's textbook on the subject,
Thinking and Deciding.

My study of cognitive biases and heuristics contributed to my initial loss of faith, which culminated early in 2000.

I've also read a fair amount about possible evolutionary and biological bases for religion. Early on, I read Stewart Gurthrie's Faces in the Clouds, which introduced me to evolutionary psychology of religion and the possible role of hyperactive agent detection in the origins of religiosity. I also read a book by Justin Barrett and pieces of various books by Scott Atran and Pascal Boyer. I was particularly impressed with William Irons's work on religion as a hard-to-fake signal of commitment.

My thinking in general is shaped by my reading in cognitive biases and heuristics. And my thinking about religion is definitely influenced by evolutionary psychological approaches. That said, I don't think religion reduces solely to an evolved mechanism, and even if it did, the brain circuitry responsible for human reasoning was produced by evolution as well: evolutionary origins don't invalidate a cognitive process or phenomenon.

Sorry for asking a lot

No problem! Thanks for your interest.

By the way, I do like Mormon Transhumanism

Sweet! There's a lot in it that's just fascinating. Have you listened to any of the MTA conference presentations?

Don

Lemmie wrote: It's unfortunate you had no challenging conversations here during your non-Mormon time, my condolences.

Lemmie,

Your claim to be giving friendly pro-social hints would be much more effective, and believable, if you made some adjustments to your own posting style.

Cheers,

Don

DonBradley wrote:I first got on message boards in 1996. I know something of their dynamics. The sort of conversation that's meant to challenge anything I say has only occurred for me here since my return to Mormonism. It isn't the normal dynamic at all.

Lemmie wrote: It's unfortunate you had no challenging conversations here during your non-Mormon time, my condolences.

DonBradley wrote:Lemmie,

Your claim to be giving friendly pro-social hints would be much more effective, and believable, if you made some adjustments to your own posting style.

Cheers,

Don

That is your fatal error, then, Don. I never claimed I was being friendly.

Right back at you!

Lemmie.

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Yes, Don. I'm an autist.

So sorry you're not lavished with praise for posting on a discussion board. You're so brave! I mean the way you don't answer questions with facts, but rather with assertions based wholly on twisting your brains into knots to make some minute point that kinda sorta fits into your version of Mormon theology is amazing. Funny how you the moment someone calls your crap out you suddenly are feeling tired and need a break from discussing things Mormon on a Mormon discussion board.

Carry on pounding the crap out of your square peg into that round hole, friendo.

- Doc

I'm starting to see your point of view very clearly, Doc.