There can be no evidence that Mormonism is false

[Philo Sofee]

I think something that is overlooked in this discussion is the point that Dr Peterson is not just arguing that there can be no evidence that Mormonism is false, he is also arguing that there is no evidence that his particular version of it is false, so, for example, there can be no evidence of a fictional divinely inspired Book of Mormon or Book of Abraham.

In other words, the ultimate closed mind. I don't believe it, therefore it can't be proven. Conversely, I believe it, therefore it can't be disproven. We see this crippling attitude in the humanities, science, philosophy, etc. It is the disease of our modernity - the acid of belief no matter what. The belief that no matter what, based on evidence (if it's misinterpreted, so what, I know I am still right), my understanding is correct. It is a decided lack of humility which plagues our culture these days... Dan Peterson is just another victim and his myopic approach is the symptom of the problem.

[Dr Moore]

If everything and anything must be justified because everything and anything cannot be valid evidence of falsehood, what can the leaders get away with?

Murder
Theft
Rape
Vandalism
Insurrection
Lying
Fraud
Genocide
Racism
And more…

All of these happened at the hands of Mormon leaders in church history, all were disgusting and wrong, and all have been arrogantly rationalized by Mopologists. There is no bright line; this is one of their core religious values.

[Philo Sofee]

In regard to Peterson's naïve approach, I would side firmly with the Lithuanian metaphysician/traditionalist scholar Algis Uzdavinys, Ascent to Heaven In Islamic and Jewish Mysticism,, the Matheson Trust for Comparative Religion, 2011, p. xi, quoting Michael Morony - "conclusions based on unverified assumptions resemble an intellectual house of cards and tend to dissolve in meaningless generalizations."

[Res Ipsa]

The notion that there cannot be contradictory "genuine" or "valid" evidence relevant to a particular claim is to completely mangle the notion of what evidence is and how to interpret it. Peterson is not interested in finding the ultimate truth about the LDS church because he has already decided what that truth is. Thus, he is not interested in using evidence to find that truth. Because what he has already decided is true includes an omnipotent (or quasi-omnipotent) super being, all he is interested is in finding a possible (not the most likely, or even plausible) interpretation of the evidence that would not contradict his pre-determined conclusion. And, given the always present option of invoking the powers of the super being, any motivated person can find some possible interpretation of the evidence that is not inconsistent with the pre-existing conclusion. The conclusion drives the interpretation of the evidence.

This "mopologetic" mode of reasoning is very different from the reasoning from evidence we use every day to try and figure things out. There, we take all the evidence we are aware of and try to figure out which explanation is the best fit given the totality of evidence. The evidence drives the interpretation and the conclusion.

Speaking for a sample of one, I experienced what I think was an actual paradigm shift after I first started thinking about the LDS church using normal reasoning. I experienced a degree of cognitive dissonance in my brain as what I already "knew" to be true collided with reasoning from the evidence. The latter required me to give serious consideration to the LDS church not being what it claimed to be. And, once I did that, my brain refused to accept the mopologetic reasoning that it had used for all of my life. Once I started thinking about the LDS church in terms of the best fit with the known evidence, I simply could not make my brain think about the church in the way I had been doing for years.

Rather than claiming that evidence that the LDS church is not what it claims to be as not "authentic" or "genuine," I think it would be more intellectually honest to come out and say that evidence is irrelevant to the LDS church's truth claims. That would at least avoid positing nonsense about riding tapirs.

[Gadianton]

It seems general enough:
DCP wrote:
Since the Church is ex hypothesi true, there can be no genuine evidence that it is false
The ball of evil grows bigger and bigger as you sort out the implications of this statement.

Would DCP be happy with the statement, "The Book of Mormon is false, but the Church is still true?" No. I'm sure somewhere, we can find a statement where he or one of his evil cohorts said that for the Church to be true, the Book of Mormon also must be true. See where this is going?

An objection might be, shouldn't you be able to use his own "railroad track" logic against him? It can seem like the Church is false just as it seems like railroad tracks will meet, but in fact, the Book of Mormon being false doesn't make the Church false? No, no, that would not be accepted. The Book of Mormon being true must be covered under the general statement of the Church being true. He will certainly adjust his original statement to accommodate this.

But can the Book of Mormon be true without being ancient or historical? I'm sure someone can dig up a statement somewhere that if the Book of Mormon is not ancient, then it's not true, and the Church is not true. And so on the assumption the Church is true and can never be false, it follows that the Book of Mormon is true and it is ancient and historical. Where does this end? There is no end in sight.

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/tes ... l-sorenson
Sorenson wrote:
More than four hundred elements of the book’s text are written in a manner and display content that cannot be accounted for except by supposing its Mesoamerican origin
If the church is true, then the Book of Mormon must be true, which means it must be ancient and historical, which means it must be Mesoamerican. Basically, Peterson's simple assumption has everything it needs implied to ensure that the Mopologists are right about everything, and that no cost is too high too promote the beliefs of Mopoligists, not dishonesty, not underhanded attacks on critics.
Top

[hauslern]

https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?u ... #pageNum=2

This paper by LDS Egyptologist Michael Rhodes.

Hungarian Egyptologists Tamas Mekis thoughts on Rhodes:

I read though Dr. Rhodes writing through the link you provided. He treats finely tha facts about mummies and papyri and finely explicats Joseph Smith's results too. I can just say that he is right. In the time of Joseph Smith Egyptology was almost nowhere (hieroglyphs were just about 20 . years earlier deciphered !). Smith equipped with a biblical knowledge approched towards the mummies and the papyri, and interpreted them according to this knowledge. His interpretations are practically wonderful achievements from this point of view on their own (emphasising that he had no egyptological knowledge at all!). It is another question, that these papyri had nothing to do with the Bible and the Abrahamic tradition, ergo all is a misinterpretation, but once again in the time of Joseph Smith it could have been accepted, since the science was nowhere.

[Doctor Scratch]

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/tes ... l-sorenson
Sorenson wrote:
More than four hundred elements of the book’s text are written in a manner and display content that cannot be accounted for except by supposing its Mesoamerican origin
If the church is true, then the Book of Mormon must be true, which means it must be ancient and historical, which means it must be Mesoamerican. Basically, Peterson's simple assumption has everything it needs implied to ensure that the Mopologists are right about everything, and that no cost is too high too promote the beliefs of Mopoligists, not dishonesty, not underhanded attacks on critics.

You’re quite right, and this fundamentalist intransigence has put them in the very odd position of being actual anti-Mormons vis-a-vis the Heartlanders.

[doubtingthomas]

Excellent point. Why are they attacking Heartlanders at all?

Think about Young Earth creationists and Old Earth creationists, one group is more dishonest. Would you agree?

Heartlanders know that their belief is true, and any evidence that Smoot and friends throw at them is wasted because it can (according to Dan's process) be re-interpreted in such a way to preserve their belief. There's no use debating anything once you assert your belief is true by definition.

The Heartlanders claim that Lamanite DNA was detected. It's a pretty extraordinary claim. I don't see how the Lamanite DNA claim is unfalsifiable and open to interpretation.

"Despite popular belief, the currently available DNA evidence supports the Book of Mormon. "
https://bookofmormonevidence.org/lds-la ... -evidence/

"Cumorah Land! Archaeological Proof of a Huge Battle and more!"
https://bookofmormonevidence.org/cumora ... ge-battle/

[Doctor Scratch]

In his latest blog entry, he appears to be moving the goal posts. He didn't mean to imply that there isn't any compelling evidence *against* the Church, but rather, it will all turn out in the Church's favor in the end. He compares the truthfulness of LDS claims to Copernicus's theory of the solar system. Sure: the benighted morons of yesteryear thought that the sun and the moon revolved around the Earth, but in the end, Copernicus was true! Just like how the Church will be! We may be waiting many more decades or centuries before they dig up the remains of Zarahemla in the Yucatan, but it will all turn out true in the end!

[drumdude]

I’m going to challenge Daniel on his clarification. He thinks it that if someone believes their religion is true, then they have to dismiss all evidence against it as false or yet to be proven false.

This is only true for fundamentalist inflexible religions like Mormonism. If the garden of Eden didn’t exist, most non-fundamentalist Christians don’t have a problem. But if Nephi didn’t exist, Mormonism has a serious problem.

What Daniel really said is that he believes Mormonism is a fundamentalist religion, and can’t throw the historicity of the Book of Mormon under the bus. I agree completely with him. But I don’t sympathize with his personal delusion that because he has a witness of the truth of Mormonism, that must mean that Hebrews built a vast ancient undiscovered civilization in the Americas. It is vastly more likely that his personal witness of the truth of Mormonism is incorrect.