Earlier in the week i posted gemli's response to Seatimer. The name sounded familiar, so I looked it up here, and it turns out he's commented before about gemli, and even, conveniently, about the concept of evidence as it relates to the telling of supernatural stories. In particular, the 'gold plate' story. Doc quoted this from Seatimer:
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote: ↑Tue Jun 15, 2021 1:15 am
You skeptics really don’t understand the power of
larping eye-witness accounts that totes happened. For example Seatimer off SeN’s comments section waxed damn near poetic what it’d be like if a skeptic for realz saw and hefted ‘golden’ plates:
Seatimer
To a certain degree, gemli is correct in insisting that spiritual evidence is difficult if not impossible to measure. There is a certain amount of truth to what he says and claims. The true difficulty lies within the individual. What one person feels or senses cannot be easily transferrable to another person.
That being said, if gemli were somehow transported back to the day and happened to be a member of the Whitmer family, and if gemli happened to be one of the men to see and then "heft" certain golden or brass plates, would he be the same person thereafter? If in that moment of time, he had seen and hefted the plates, if he were to then deny and disavow the experience, exactly what kind of person would that make him? In today's world, would we perceive him to be a false witness or would we accept and glory and laud his "brave" decision to "stand against the crowd?"
Truly it is impossible to transfer one's own experiences, memories and discoveries over to another individual. According to God, each individual is responsible for his or her own actions. I am grateful that my heart is a "believing" heart. The glorious assurances that I have received therefrom, are worth more than all the doomsday nihilism that the atheist so adamantly adheres to.
I love it when believers have to create some sort of fantastical ‘what if’ role-playing scenario in order to generate the veneer of plausibility...
- Doc
So, it takes a 'believing heart' to accept testimony as evidence? So, one must assume the premise, in order to conclude the premise? Okay, sure, Muhlestein.
Which brings up Gad's other point about angels and demanding evidence:
Gadianton wrote: ↑Fri Mar 15, 2024 1:28 am
...[PG] remarked that it's hard to believe in angels, like it's hard to believe in a Higgs Field. There are many discussions that can happen from here, and in my original response, I picked one. Another thing on my mind though, was that it depends on how you look at it. Angels were very easy for Joseph Smith to believe in because of their diligent service to Joseph for whatever jam he was in. An angel threatened him with a sword if he didn't marry a 15-year-old girl. When the physical plates were receding in his narrative but then suddenly he needed them again just after moving back from his father-in-laws place, an angel had whisked them from the forest to his backyard. He didn't need to hide them in a bean barrel on the way back. As you point out, if the story elements don't add up in some way, we will reject the story on narrative grounds. I think we will do so long before getting to the point of considering traditional evidence. And that is somewhat of a flaw in Gemli's MO. It's much more effective to take the narrative at face value, and then look for the holes in the story, than to sit back and demand physical proof. Of course, as I've said before, if Gemli were to ever do something like that, he'd be banned....
The only point I might slightly disagree with is that it might be
"much more effective to take the narrative at face value, and then look for the holes in the story," if only because once you've conceded angels, then the miracles angels can perform can be used by an apologist to explain away just about anything. I think it is called the "goddidit" defense, and then you're down the Mo-Mo rabbit hole.
As a
never-Moe, gemli would probably be in over his head with that strategy because of his lack of very specific knowledge. (as in, don't argue with a Trekker if you don't have every episode of every spin-off memorized.) Mopologists have said the darndest things in defense of lds weirdness, and they are coming up with new and weirder things all the time.
