Yeah, I have to agree with my brother, who isn't religious himself but has lived in countries with a range of different predominant religions and has called Mormonism "the world's most obviously made-up religion". Even Scientology is less fake, I've concluded, because I think that Scientological "auditing" probably does tend to induce a temporary euphoria after a couple of hours, so that it's real in the way that a religion based on beer would be real.
Interesting that you should make a comparison with Scientology. By chance, and through having read a good article on the subject, I got interested in finding out more about what the experience of being a scientologist involves. I learned quite a lot from a website run by escaped scientologists, and then I think someone mentioned Mormonism, a religion I had barely heard of. I then found the Recovery from Mormonism board, spent some time hanging around the old MAD board (what does the middle 'A' stand for? I've forgotten), and then found this place.
At the time, there were a number of apologists who posted here, and there were some really substantive debates involving Egyptology, papyrology, and even the mathematics of spiral scroll winding. I joined enthusiastically in the latter - though I think CaliforniaKid was the top dog (he had a chimpanzee avatar). Why did the apologists leave? I'd say a major element was the fact that in all the arguments where objective issues were at stake, they lost hands down. Now all we have left is Mental Gymnast, who seems to manage to insulate his faith from all rational challenge by his mastery of the art of psychocontortion. He just isn't very interesting, sadly. But old habits die hard, and here I still am ...
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
The question of whether there is life after death depends at least on the definition of "death", on the perspective of the person judging "death", on the definition of "alive after death", and on the perspective of the person judging "alive after death",. There is a multi-dimensional spectrum of alive-dead-alive scenarios.
For a discussion to make sense, I think we need some kind of agreement on the corresponding area of multi-dimensional space we are talking about.
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The question of whether there is life after death depends at least on the definition of "death", on the perspective of the person judging "death", on the definition of "alive after death", and on the perspective of the person judging "alive after death",. There is a multi-dimensional spectrum of alive-dead-alive scenarios.
For a discussion to make sense, I think we need some kind of agreement on the corresponding area of multi-dimensional space we are talking about.
As I understand it, we are talking about the time period which commences after a persons biology has completely ceased to function, and they have been certified as “deceased”.
Premise 1. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
Premise 2. The best evidence for the Book of Mormon is eyewitness testimony.
Conclusion. Therefore, the best evidence for the Book of Mormon is notoriously unreliable.
There can be different definitions of death for medical purposes, mostly for triage. At what point is it best to give up trying to save someone and work on patients with better chances? For the question of whether there can be life beyond bodily death, though, the decisive issue is brain activity. As long as some neurons are still firing, a person's experience is still that of a living brain. It doesn't matter whether the heart is still pumping or not, or whether the brain activity is unhealthy. Calling NDE's evidence for life after death because "death" has occurred by some medical definition that is irrelevant to the crucial issue of remembered experience is a fallacy of equivocation, a play on words like saying that diamonds are worthless because diamonds are ice, baby, and ice can just melt.
Somebody who really wants all those NDE accounts to be worth something might object that defining death as total loss of brain function unfairly rigs the game by making death something from which no-one can come back by definition. First of all that wouldn't be a valid objection. There is no rule that says that every question has to offer equal chances to both sides. If you say that jumping to the moon means actually touching the actual moon using only my own leg power, I don't get to say that you have cheated by defining "jumping to the moon" in a way that makes it inherently impossible. On the contrary, the only way to leave any chance for jumping to the moon to be possible is to use a trick definition. Really jumping to the moon is impossible.
Secondly, defining death in this case as brain shut-down does not actually imply that returning from death is impossible—at least, not necessarily. It could hypothetically occur, as far as I can tell, that somebody's brain stops doing anything, and cools to room temperature, but then after some time they are somehow revived. If there were enough cases like that, and the revived people in those cases all tended to report experiences that were significantly different from the reports from people who only came near death, then that might count as evidence that there was some kind of consciousness that persisted through bodily death. We'd have a control group (the people whose brains never shut down completely) plus the test group (the people whose brains did shut down), and there'd be a significant difference in reported effects, so it would be reasonable—though not certain—to suppose that the difference in effects was due to the difference in conditions, namely actual death.
If the memories of those revived brain-dead people were only similar to those of people whose brains hadn't completely shut down before they were revived, however, this would rather suggest that the remembered experiences in all cases occurred while the brain was still working, and that all that had persisted through total brain shut-down had been memory of what had happened before. So if evidence for life after death ever does appear from medical revivals, it will have to be through people reporting things other than lights, life reviews, feelings of love, or the like. The currently accumulated data about NDE experiences are the background to which actual post-death experiences would have to be compared: they are what is not evidence for life after death.
Yes, that sounds harsh, if you want NDEs to mean something. It's the truth, though. That's how medical evidence works: you contrast with the control group that only received the placebo. If the people who didn't get your new drug recover just as well as the people who did get it, then your drug didn't do anything. If the people whose brains did shut down say things just like the ones whose brains didn't, then those experiences were not ones of death, but just the sputtering of a brain close to death, remembered after revival.
By chance, and through having read a good article on the subject, I got interested in finding out more about what the experience of being a scientologist involves. I learned quite a lot from a website run by escaped scientologists, and then I think someone mentioned Mormonism, a religion I had barely heard of.
This is similar enough to my pathway here that we might have read each other's posts, under other usernames, on the Ex-Scientologist Message Board. I was interested in Scientology for a while, in the sense that I wanted to understand how any reasonably intelligent and educated people could get seriously into Hubbard's obvious nonsense. After a couple of years I was beginning to lose interest, feeling that I had learned all I was going to learn and that Scientology as a cult was going to dwindle away too slowly for its demise to be exciting to watch. Around that time someone showed up on ESMB posting about how they held the Aaronic Priesthood, or something, and suddenly I had something to which I could move on.
Before that all I really knew about Mormonism was from A Study in Scarlet. I think my first stop was Jeff Lindsay's "Mormanity" blog (as it was then called). Lindsay made Mormonism seem decent and well-intentioned, but he couldn't hide the basic wackiness.
... I wanted to understand how any reasonably intelligent and educated people could get seriously into Hubbard's obvious nonsense. ...
Curiosity of that kind is what has made me hang around here for so long. And then there is the wider issue of whether there is any kind of religious belief that will not seem strange and baseless to someone who has never met anything like it before... which might imply ....what?
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
... I wanted to understand how any reasonably intelligent and educated people could get seriously into Hubbard's obvious nonsense. ...
Curiosity of that kind is what has made me hang around here for so long. And then there is the wider issue of whether there is any kind of religious belief that will not seem strange and baseless to someone who has never met anything like it before... which might imply ....what?
I have similar thoughts. CK’s takes were very interesting, along with watching Kevin Graham and shulem’s arcs. What keeps me interested is that Mormonism is one of the rare cases where you can actually watch myth-making happen—documents, witnesses, revisions, shifting claims. You get to see the machinery. For me, the puzzle of how the book was written is challenging enough to continue to look for the solution. I realize it’s probably enough that it came from a treasure-seeking stone that failed to produce treasure, but it’s still interesting to examine the mechanisms.
Maybe it implies that the absurdity is part of the draw. As the saying goes—whoever first said it—“the bigger the claim, the bigger the crowd,” or something. Outlandish ideas create their own crowds of followers.
What keeps me interested is that Mormonism is one of the rare cases where you can actually watch myth-making happen—documents, witnesses, revisions, shifting claims. You get to see the machinery. For me, the puzzle of how the book was written is challenging enough to continue to look for the solution. I realize it’s probably enough that it came from a treasure-seeking stone that failed to produce treasure, but it’s still interesting to examine the mechanisms.
A very good point. It's not only an obviously made-up religion - there is just about enough historical evidence to give us a reasonable idea of how the 'making-up' process unfolded. I'm not sure whether there are any other reasonably well-known religions that have the same feature to the same degree. Suggestions, anyone?
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
“Physics Guy” wrote: Even Scientology is less fake, I've concluded, because I think that Scientological "auditing" probably does tend to induce a temporary euphoria after a couple of hours, so that it's real in the way that a religion based on beer would be real.
I love this! Is there a particular beer you have in mind?
My preference is red wine. I served Sangria with our Thanksgiving festivities. LOL
"Yo 148, 3-to-the-3-to-the-6-to-the-9. Representin' the ABQ. What up, biatch? Leave it at the tone!"
