Logic and Dan Peterson arguments.

[Imwashingmypirate]

A Facebook friend wrote me this response to the question would Abraham have had right to be mummified if he was treated as a a criminal.

"Muhelstein is intellectually dishonest. The only honest way to deal with it is to say, "this ancient Egyptian funerary image was used as a catalyst by Joseph Smith to receive revelation about the sacrifice of Abraham (which may not have happened in reality, but which is divine as it was inspired of God for our spiritual edification)
And no they wouldn't have mummified a heretical criminal.
In fact mutilating the body of an enemy so he COULDN'T have an afterlife was actually done. Also they would chip out carvings of kings that they didn't want to have a name that lived on. Like Images of Hatshepsut that have been defaced etc.
Mummification was an expensive, involved process. It took much labor and materials (natron,. canopic jars, linen strips etc.). It took 70 days to complete a mummification. They wouldn't expend that on anyone but someone Kerry they revered greatly, or someone who had paid for it."

Interestingly in the Bible it says that Jacob was embalmed and mourned for 70 days in Egypt after he died:

Genesis 50:2-3

"2 And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel.

3 And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days."

"

Bit of a stupid move to "translate" something that scholars have access to and were able to translate.

Prophesying by the spirit (if you will) is not the same as translating. Reminds me of those psychic people who say what comes to their head when reading people.

[drumdude]

DanielPeterson to Michael Hoggan
Michael Hogan: "I actually am in favor of the use of a naturalist methodology for science. "

So am I, for the record.

I'm simply skeptical of unlimited confidence in a naturalism-of-the-gaps.

[canpakes]

Dan applies some principles of logic:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... proof.html

If the shower towel is dry, nobody has taken a shower.
The shower towel is dry.
Therefore, nobody has taken a shower.

Related to this logic, does it follow that if someone doesn’t have a towel, they are unable to shower?
: )

[Res Ipsa]

Dan applies some principles of logic:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... proof.html

If the shower towel is dry, nobody has taken a shower.
The shower towel is dry.
Therefore, nobody has taken a shower.

Related to this logic, does it follow that if someone doesn’t have a towel, they are unable to shower?
: )

You might need quantifier logic for that.

[Marcus]

Dan applies some principles of logic:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... proof.html

If the shower towel is dry, nobody has taken a shower.
The shower towel is dry.
Therefore, nobody has taken a shower.

Related to this logic, does it follow that if someone doesn’t have a towel, they are unable to shower?
: )

It's a loan word. Skousen has explained that in Early Modern English, the appropriate correspondence is "ShamWow." LIDAR readings of the delmarva penninsula are anticipated to show use of the "ShamWow" no more than a millenia, maybe two, after Book of Mormon times. (That's close enough for archaeology, right? Science is so... malleable.)

[drumdude]

Related to this logic, does it follow that if someone doesn’t have a towel, they are unable to shower?
: )

It's a loan word. Skousen has explained that in Early Modern English, the appropriate correspondence is "ShamWow." LIDAR readings of the delmarva penninsula are anticipated to show use of the "ShamWow" no more than a millenia, maybe two, after Book of Mormon times. (That's close enough for archaeology, right? Science is so... malleable.)

Stop making me spit out my drink, Marcus!!

[Marcus]

It's a loan word. Skousen has explained that in Early Modern English, the appropriate correspondence is "ShamWow." LIDAR readings of the delmarva penninsula are anticipated to show use of the "ShamWow" no more than a millenia, maybe two, after Book of Mormon times. (That's close enough for archaeology, right? Science is so... malleable.)

Stop making me spit out my drink, Marcus!!

My apologies. It's a slow week for student-prof interaction, what with St. Paddy's day looming.

(You know even if your caffeine drink is iced, you're still going to hell. And if it's Snapple Iced Tea in your hand, say hi to mentalgymnast for me when you get there. )

[tagriffy]

For me this is a big part of what Mormon apologetics in particular does. If all you ever seriously ask is whether or not Joseph Smith was a true prophet, then sure, there are all kinds of things that happened that could be considered evidence for his prophethood, because they fit the story of him being a prophet more closely than they fit, on average, the entire set of all other possibilities—most of which are of Smith having been a completely ordinary shmoe. As soon as you also consider seriously whether Smith might have been a reasonably clever fraud, though, then an awful lot of details fit that theory really well, while being only comparatively tenuously consistent with the prophet theory.

There are a lot of logs that I'd like to throw on this fire. What is a "true prophet" or "reasonably clever fraud"? Are they actually mutually exclusive categories such that you can be one or the other but you can't possibly be both? It does seem to me that to being either a "true prophet" or a "reasonably clever fraud" requires a person to be pretty creative, for example. But how do you decide which category to put this creative idea in? How does the society a person lives in affect the person in question?

These are the sorts of questions that come to my mind when trying to discuss whether Smith was a true prophet or reasonably clever fraud. I have no objective means to tell the difference. Whether apologist or whatever have you, judging Joseph (or any other major religious figure for that matter) a true prophet or reasonably clever fraud ultimately says more about you (speaking generically) that it does about Joseph. If Joseph fits your particular mold of what a true prophet is or should be, then true prophet he is. If the only other alternative is reasonably clever fraud, then reasonably clever fraud he is. In this sense, the prophet/fraud dichotomy is more of a Rorsharch test than anything else.

[Analytics]

Where are the philosophers of logic here?

Another: If it rains the grass will be wet.
The grass is wet.
Therefore, it has rained.

I think this is a trick question. Following strict deductive logic, the grass being wet doesn’t mean anything. In contrast, if your second assumption was the grass is not wet, we could logically conclude it did not rain.

Getting back to DCP’s comments, his views of the relationship between evidence, logic, and the truth comes across as antiquated. Logic per se is a part of modern rational thinking, but only a small, relatively uninteresting part.

What his “objective public proof”post makes me think about is how the books I read and the books he reads are mutually exclusive sets. Modern thought about using scientific abductive reasoning takes into account the fact that people have cognitive biases that are especially pronounced when dealing with truth claims that don’t affect our day-to-day lives.

DCP seems to take the fact that some people believe in irrational things as a license to believe in those things, too. He then goes down the rabbit hole of searching out books that justify what he wants to believe rather than figure out the truth.

[¥akaSteelhead]

Another: If it rains the grass will be wet.
The grass is wet.
Therefore, it has rained

If the shower towel is dry, nobody has taken a shower.
The shower towel is dry.
Therefore, nobody has taken a shower.

Both of these are non sequiturs/affirming the consequent as nothing has been done to eliminate other possibilities.

Maybe someone ran the sprinklers, therefore the grass is wet. Maybe someone took a shower, used the towel, ran it through the drier, and hung it again.