Rasmussen’s ‘narratives’?

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Lem
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Rasmussen’s ‘narratives’?

Post by Lem »

Usually I don’t read Rasmussen’s narratives, but this time I did, and wow. Are they all this weird?
The Narrative

When we last left you, our ardent skeptic, you had just awoken from a strangely informative dream. The winter night outside lay still and quiet, unmarred by anything that might disturb your sleep further, and you could tell that dawn still lay hours away. As unsettling as it had been being swallowed in the depths of an ash cloud, it doesn’t take long for sleep to once again overtake you.

It’s there, despite your best efforts, that another dream finds you. You open your eyes in annoyance, unsure of where you are or what scene lay in front of you. All you can tell for sure is that you’re no longer in New England, and that it’s no longer winter. A harsh sun beats down on you with a heavy, wet heat, your breath weighed down with an oppressive moisture that matches the sweat you now feel oozing from your pores. And you aren’t alone. Around you are dozens of others who stand shirtless, their bare backs exposed to the sun’s full rays, their hands busily wielding instruments of labor—shovels and picks—hurling them against the barren rock of an open-pit mine.

You watch as they work tirelessly, the blades of their shovels searching for something, but you’re not sure what. With the effort they’re exerting, you only get the sense that, whatever it is, it’s of tremendous worth.

After a moment you notice a flurry of activity off to your right. A dozen voices chatter excitedly in an unknown language, and a crowd gathers around something you can’t quite see. The laborers around you turn to look as well, and they immediately drop their shovels and turn to the source of the commotion. You follow, eager to see what the workers were able to find. You push your way through the crowd, and the men in your way seem to melt away as they let you pass. The crowd had formed a circle around two eager workers, who lay their prize on a stone slab before them.

The prize is…nothing special, as far as you can tell. A large clod of misshapen dirt that seems ready to fall apart in their hands. You can’t seem to understand why these hardened laborers would be so keen to celebrate its discovery, but keen they are. Two large men emerge from the crowd with hammers in their hands, with heads of iron, and with shafts nearly as tall as the men themselves. Their biceps twitch as they bring the hammers to the ready.

Surely one swing from those hammers will bash the clod into oblivion. But the crowd seems as eager as ever as the two raise the hammers high. The iron heads fall like lightning, a deep thud rising above the din, raising a cloud of dust. Yet as the dust settles, instead of crumbling, you see that the clod has barely moved. Undeterred, one worker raises their hammer again, letting it fall with the same crushing power. The other does the same, followed again by the first, their efforts setting a pounding rhythm against the energetic shouts of their fellow workers. With each strike the clod loses some dust here, an awkward protrusion there, but still it keeps its overall shape. The dust forms a cloud that makes it increasingly difficult to see, but after what seems like an age you see the swings of the laborers slow, their aching arms soon falling still and their hammers silent. As they catch their breath you can at last see the clod, but it’s a clod no longer—it’s a book—the same book that lay on the table back in New England, its seemingly fragile spine and soft pages no worse for the overwhelming wear they’d just endured. The other workers let out a fervent cheer as the book comes into full view, but no one stops to retrieve it from the slab. After a moment the workers return to their pounding, the heads of metal ringing against the book with the distinct clang of metallic copper.

That ringing fades, as do the crowd of men around you, and you awake again to the quiet of your cabin. This time you can see the hint of approaching dawn through the window. Your eyes turn to the table, where the book still lay open to where you’d been reading. This book may seem to you a dusty clod, you think, with the origin of that thought unclear, but it won’t remain that way forever. You may not live to see that evidence take full shape. But over time, as its critics swing away, the stronger that evidence will become.

You wonder at that thought—asking yourself whether it could possibly be true. Could any fraud such as this get more plausible the more it was examined and scrutinized?
That’s just … odd. Rasmussen thinks entirely too much about “critics” of his religion.
drumdude
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Re: Rasmussen’s ‘narratives’?

Post by drumdude »

Could any fraud such as this get more plausible the more it was examined and scrutinized?
Yes, Kyler. I think that you can validate any fraud in this wrongheaded framework you have developed. There is nothing special about Mormonism that makes it fit your method. I would like you see you apply it to the theories of L. Ron. Hubbard for consistency's sake. I think you might actually learn something if you took your method seriously to its logical conclusions.
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Dr. Shades
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Re: Rasmussen’s ‘narratives’?

Post by Dr. Shades »

Umm, . . . link?
"It’s ironic that the Church that people claim to be true, puts so much effort into hiding truths."
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Lem
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Re: Rasmussen’s ‘narratives’?

Post by Lem »

Not a clue. Somewhere, I think.
Lem
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Re: Rasmussen’s ‘narratives’?

Post by Lem »

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Dr. Shades
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Re: Rasmussen’s ‘narratives’?

Post by Dr. Shades »

Thanks, drumdude.
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Physics Guy
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Re: Rasmussen’s ‘narratives’?

Post by Physics Guy »

Apologetics theatre is where your arguments are only even intended to look good to the faithful. I guess this is the next stage beyond that, where you write about imaginary skeptics being convinced by even your silliest points. Apologetics fantasy.
I was a teenager before it was cool.
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Dr Moore
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Re: Rasmussen’s ‘narratives’?

Post by Dr Moore »

Another reason why 0 credible experts will publicly support this project.

PG is right. It's fantasy. In the same way pornography is fantasy.
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Gabriel
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Re: Rasmussen’s ‘narratives’?

Post by Gabriel »

Dr Moore wrote:
Mon Oct 18, 2021 4:09 pm
Another reason why 0 credible experts will publicly support this project.

PG is right. It's fantasy. In the same way pornography is fantasy.
Indeed, and at the risk of sounding like a prude, when this fantasy is indulged in too much, it often causes these scholars to start experimenting with mathturbation. Now mathturbation may seem like a relatively innocuous indiscretion when practiced in private, but it often devolves into mutual mathturbation, and before you know it, you see these same scholars quite shamelessly mathturbating in public. I say let no one be called a credible expert who is not free from this practice.
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