Gemli explains...

[Res Ipsa]

gemli > DanielPeterson
16 hours ago

Don't I get royalties when I'm quoted? ...

We've been caught.

(Requesting a petty cash voucher from Cassius U. accounting dept.)

[Physics Guy]

No, see, we're not quoting Peterson. These are just unpublished notes for our upcoming books.

[Marcus]

No, see, we're not quoting Peterson. These are just unpublished notes for our upcoming books.

[Gadianton]

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.

I do agree for Gemli as an outsider, and given how good he is at his trade, that he should continue to do as he's doing, I just think it's also important to look at the deficiencies in that general method in addition to the benefits.

I've had a little trouble explaining what I mean by narrative, and it also sounds like I'm going off on a postmodern tangent, which is exactly where apologists want to go -- to where truth can be nuanced and bracketed and in fact, you're suggesting that conceding leads down a rabbit hole, and I sort of agree, but that's an occupational hazard and I still think it's main line of arguing.

The best example I can think of is women and the priesthood. If I'm like gemli, then it's a moot point because there is no such thing as priesthood. Women in the Church can't be deprived of something that doesn't exist. First, show me a sign and demonstrate priesthood is real, and then we can consider other implications. Debates about women and priesthood are the closest to an example to 100% narrative I can think of -- the narrative role "priesthood" plays in the religion vs. it's actual power to heal or to call fire down from heaven. Most who I see arguing over this do as I said, accept for the sake of argument priesthood is real, and then go on to see how unfair that becomes to women, and how patronizing when the Brethren make up ways to make it sound like they have it without actually having it.

If I go full-blown logical positivist, we can't talk about women and the priesthood at all because "priesthood" is a meaningless concept as it has no verified material definition. In general, the positivist, "show me the evidence" or "your words are meaningless" route becomes less effective because you kind of stand back and flippantly dismiss everything the religionist says as they'll never meet your burden, but that also allows them to get away with saying a great deal that goes unchallenged.

Angels may be a step down, but they are still so absurd that even most religionists know they can't meet Gemli's burden of proof and aren't going to try. Even the apologists don't really try to prove angels except by implication to the Book of Mormon as ancient. And a savvy apologist would try to decouple the angel from the Book of Mormon text just as IDers try to decouple God from design in order to say what they are doing is real science by design inference. Of course the Mopologists aren't that savvy, so...hmm.

[Physics Guy]

I think this is an important point, though elusive enough that we may all be groping a bit to address it.

One thing I want to try to say is that to some extent everything is what Gadianton calls "narrative". People who think that they have the cold, hard facts that don't require any story to make them make sense usually don't actually understand their own facts well. Everything is surprisingly complicated, to jumped-up monkeys like us who have to think with lumps of meat. To use my personal jargon: there are no potatoes.

On the other hand this is not just license to postulate anything you want, spin any story you want, and call yourself just as reasonable as anyone else. You need to have a coherent explanation of how things fit together. You don't get to just stipulate angels and then exploit that to solve every problem; everything may be narrative, but narrative doesn't just mean that everything goes. Even if you're openly writing a novel, you cannot just have anything happen that happens to pop into your head. I mean, you can write that kind of random nonsense, but readers will throw down your book, having lost any ability to pretend that your story makes sense. Even fiction is surprisingly strict, and reality's worse.

I guess I'm a little obsessed this way. Professionally my thing—it took me decades to realise that this was the common thread in all my research—is to try to trace everything back to first principles and not accept higher-level theories as understanding (though I can easily accept that they're accurate as far as they go). Like, I'm still trying to understand how airplanes fly, in terms of air molecules bouncing off the wings. I'm sure the explanations in terms of air pressure and lift are all right, but those are all supposed to just be proxy summaries of how molecules bounce, and I want to fill in those details.

I'm still hoping for simple pictures, not just long lists of details. I'm looking for clarity, not for masses of facts, but also not just for opaque conclusions. I want a good story, not too long, not too short.

So on the one hand I'm annoyed by what seem to be cheap and shallow dismissals by Gemli. It's like hearing someone complain a lot about how bad a movie was, but never saying what exactly was bad about it. I want to hear something specific that's bad, and understand how it is bad. I want to hear how it is wrong, not just that it is wrong.

On the other hand, my own investigations of conservative Mormon apologetics have consistently found so many egregiously bad things that I've concluded that it's all just garbage. There's a limit to how much critical acumen is worth bringing to bear upon Battlefield Earth. At some point the vanishing value of serious criticism falls below the low value of mockery.

I still don't understand the persistence of Gemli's hectoring. I'd either pick a few clear examples and discuss them more thoroughly, or just give up on these folks.

[huckelberry]

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.

I do agree for Gemli as an outsider, and given how good he is at his trade, that he should continue to do as he's doing, I just think it's also important to look at the deficiencies in that general method in addition to the benefits.

I've had a little trouble explaining what I mean by narrative, and it also sounds like I'm going off on a postmodern tangent, which is exactly where apologists want to go -- to where truth can be nuanced and bracketed and in fact, you're suggesting that conceding leads down a rabbit hole, and I sort of agree, but that's an occupational hazard and I still think it's main line of arguing.

The best example I can think of is women and the priesthood. If I'm like gemli, then it's a moot point because there is no such thing as priesthood. Women in the Church can't be deprived of something that doesn't exist. First, show me a sign and demonstrate priesthood is real, and then we can consider other implications. Debates about women and priesthood are the closest to an example to 100% narrative I can think of -- the narrative role "priesthood" plays in the religion vs. it's actual power to heal or to call fire down from heaven. Most who I see arguing over this do as I said, accept for the sake of argument priesthood is real, and then go on to see how unfair that becomes to women, and how patronizing when the Brethren make up ways to make it sound like they have it without actually having it.

If I go full-blown logical positivist, we can't talk about women and the priesthood at all because "priesthood" is a meaningless concept as it has no verified material definition. In general, the positivist, "show me the evidence" or "your words are meaningless" route becomes less effective because you kind of stand back and flippantly dismiss everything the religionist says as they'll never meet your burden, but that also allows them to get away with saying a great deal that goes unchallenged.

Angels may be a step down, but they are still so absurd that even most religionists know they can't meet Gemli's burden of proof and aren't going to try. Even the apologists don't really try to prove angels except by implication to the Book of Mormon as ancient. And a savvy apologist would try to decouple the angel from the Book of Mormon text just as IDers try to decouple God from design in order to say what they are doing is real science by design inference. Of course the Mopologists aren't that savvy, so...hmm.

My thought about priesthood may be getting in the way of following you here Gadianton. My first thought about priesthood is that is is an organizing system for power distribution in the LDS organization. Of course it matters to women that their role in the power dimension is so limited. Priesthood leaders certainly have power. Of course it is organizational power not some supernatural force the control. I remember that Mormons do think in terms of priesthood as a special power but still is it not mostly authorization to act in the organization?

[Marcus]

...Everything is surprisingly complicated, to jumped-up monkeys like us who have to think with lumps of meat...

...I still don't understand the persistence of Gemli's hectoring...

I don't know if this helps, but it's my understanding, based on a number of explanations Gemli has given, that he considers what he does not to be persistent hectoring, but rather a defense against Peterson's persistent hectoring encapsulated in this phrase 'trademarked' by the good blogger:

"the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™ "

Some recent hectorings:

Friends, I regularly plumb the terrifying depths of the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™ so that you don’t have to...

Finally: If I fall behind in sharing material from the depressingly inexhaustible Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™, I’ll never ever manage to catch up. So here is a trio of infuriating further illustrations...

The Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™ continues to yield theistic horrors that send ardent secularists scurrying for their smelling salts and their safe spaces...

I found this abomination in the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™, and feel obliged to inflict it upon you...

The Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™ continues to chronicle the many irritating ways, big and small, in which theism and theists ruin our lives...

[H]orrors that I’ve lately retrieved from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™...

That's just a few from this month, but he's made this joke in hundreds of blog entries since Hitchens passed away, as far as I know. gemli doesn't seem that amused. Please don't shoot the messenger!!!!


(On a somewhat related note, DCP plagiarized his Claudel story,reposted two days ago, directly from Karl Keating's 2013 piece in "Catholic Answers". )

[Physics Guy]

The "jumped-up monkeys thinking with lumps of meat" line is one I use in teaching quantum mechanics. (Etwas entwickelte Affen, die mit Fleisch denken müssen ....) I want to get students to get over just feeling overwhelmed and stupid, which is what we all are, and start struggling with understanding as best they can, which is the best we can do. I think that in all fields, not just quantum mechanics, one of the biggest obstacles to understanding can be just the reluctance to accept how hard things are to understand. Once you recognize that it's bound to be really hard, you can stop looking for easy escapes and knuckle down to the struggle—and then, amazingly, get there—at least up to a point.

I take the point that Peterson is a polemicist on the other side. I kind of already discounted that, because I don't expect the Mormon apologists to be rational, but objectively it is still there. Perhaps Gemli feels a quixotic need to tilt against their windmills.

[Marcus]

The "jumped-up monkeys thinking with lumps of meat" line is one I use in teaching quantum mechanics. (Etwas entwickelte Affen, die mit Fleisch denken müssen ....) I want to get students to get over just feeling overwhelmed and stupid, which is what we all are, and start struggling with understanding as best they can, which is the best we can do. I think that in all fields, not just quantum mechanics, one of the biggest obstacles to understanding can be just the reluctance to accept how hard things are to understand. Once you recognize that it's bound to be really hard, you can stop looking for easy escapes and knuckle down to the struggle—and then, amazingly, get there—at least up to a point.

Nice, I like that.

I take the point that Peterson is a polemicist on the other side. I kind of already discounted that, because I don't expect the Mormon apologists to be rational, but objectively it is still there. Perhaps Gemli feels a quixotic need to tilt against their windmills.

Well, he was feted some years back as a top 10 NYTimes online commenter, surely a modern day quixotic occupation if ever there was one.

[Marcus]

Gemli explains further:

Philip Leaning
Gemli... just parrots the same old responses...
−
gemli > Philip Leaning

My "same old responses" are statements of objective facts that don't change based on one's theological beliefs. That would be impossible anyway, since there are about 4,000 distinct religions in the world. Which ones are true? Is only one true? Or three? Or eleven? How can you tell? Maybe they're all false, given that they all can't be true. Besides, atheism isn't a "belief." It's the position one takes when there is absolutely no definitive evidence for any religious claims.

Also:

gemli > DanielPeterson
8 hours ago

Here are some assertions: Water is wet. The moon is not made of green cheese. Joe Biden is the current president of the United States.

These assertions are objectively true. They can be demonstrated to be true to anyone.

Here are some other assertions: God is the supreme being that created the universe. An angel directed Joseph Smith to a pile of Golden Plates. The body of Jesus Christ was in a cracker that a priest fed me in church. There was a global flood. The earth is 6,000 years old.

These assertions are either false, nonsense or utter nonsense. And yet some people hold them to be sacred Truths that must not be questioned. I've discovered that if a Truth can't be questioned, it's not true. And if such a question is answered with another sacred Truth, one should put one's hand on one's wallet and run quickly away.

And now for some evidence that somebody has apparently been reading here:

DanielPeterson Mod > gemli
a day ago edited

...there are innumerable things for which legitimate, testable evidence exists that aren't "self-evident." The particle-wave character of light isn't self-evident. Nor are the origin of the Grand Canyon, the evolution of horses, the nature of stellar fusion, the history of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, the guilt of most accused murderers, the relationship between Sanskrit and French, and a host of other topics.

Why do you post such silliness?...

And gemli's response:

gemli DanielPeterson
a day ago edited

The particle vs. wave nature of light was mysterious, and yet it was confirmed by the double-slit experiment in 1801. There's no such confirmation for any of the untold number of gods that people believe exist. That's because one's psychological needs can overrule objective reality. Gods are manifestations of "beings" that have served to certify our ignorance of the real world. When we discovered the actual causes of earthquakes, floods, disease and famines, gods were no longer required.

Having read your responses for some years, I can assure you that they won't make me believe in theological causes for anything. But I do have to co-exist with theists, Republicans, anti-vaxers, flat-earthers, moon-landing deniers, astrologers and other folks who think that the sincerity of their beliefs is adequate justification for them.

http://disq.us/p/2y6d3qk

Don't we all.