Chapstick owns the apologists on the Liahona

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Physics Guy
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Re: Chapstick owns the apologists on the Liahona

Post by Physics Guy »

Lots of things are in some respects similar and in others quite different. Tomatoes and stop signs are red, but only the stop signs have edges. So what amount of similarity counts as striking enough to suggest direct influence? What kind of dissimilarity is so drastic as to outweigh similarities that do exist?

Should we count two metal orbs of curious workmanship as completely unrelated because one shows direction and the other explodes? Should we count two written texts as clearly related, even though their content reflects cultures millennia apart from each other, because both have chiasmus and are therefore "Hebraic"?

It seems to me that plenty of Mormon apologists have crowed over similarities between things in the real ancient world and things in the Book of Mormon, even when the things were also very different in some ways. Live by the sword, die by the sword, because this sword cuts both ways.
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Re: Chapstick owns the apologists on the Liahona

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Physics Guy wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 8:39 am
Lots of things are in some respects similar and in others quite different. Tomatoes and stop signs are red, but only the stop signs have edges. So what amount of similarity counts as striking enough to suggest direct influence? What kind of dissimilarity is so drastic as to outweigh similarities that do exist?

Should we count two metal orbs of curious workmanship as completely unrelated because one shows direction and the other explodes? Should we count two written texts as clearly related, even though their content reflects cultures millennia apart from each other, because both have chiasmus and are therefore "Hebraic"?

It seems to me that plenty of Mormon apologists have crowed over similarities between things in the real ancient world and things in the Book of Mormon, even when the things were also very different in some ways. Live by the sword, die by the sword, because this sword cuts both ways.
It's well known that torpedos contain guidance systems. The Liahona was a guidance system. The end.
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Re: Chapstick owns the apologists on the Liahona

Post by Physics Guy »

Floating naval mines were called "torpedoes" before anyone made powered torpedoes that needed guidance. When David Farragut damned the torpedoes in 1864, the bay was Mobile but the torpedoes weren't.
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Re: Chapstick owns the apologists on the Liahona

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Physics Guy wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 8:39 am
Lots of things are in some respects similar and in others quite different. Tomatoes and stop signs are red, but only the stop signs have edges. So what amount of similarity counts as striking enough to suggest direct influence? What kind of dissimilarity is so drastic as to outweigh similarities that do exist?
Yes, you are exactly correct. There are many more important things that are troubling and worthy of discussion than attempting to draw arbitrary lines of definition.
Should we count two metal orbs of curious workmanship as completely unrelated because one shows direction and the other explodes?
I wasn't going to go on, but, um--hell yes? If one explodes and the other does not, they are clearly different things. One is a bomb, the other is not. LOL
Should we count two written texts as clearly related, even though their content reflects cultures millennia apart from each other, because both have chiasmus and are therefore "Hebraic"?

It seems to me that plenty of Mormon apologists have crowed over similarities between things in the real ancient world and things in the Book of Mormon, even when the things were also very different in some ways. Live by the sword, die by the sword, because this sword cuts both ways.
Not interested in whataboutisms, comrade.
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Re: Chapstick owns the apologists on the Liahona

Post by Sledge »

IHOP wrote:It's well known that torpedos contain guidance systems. The Liahona was a guidance system. The end.
That settles it then? Magnificent! Any two things that share a common component are the same thing then. The Rockefeller Christmas tree is dressed with thousands of light bulbs. My desk lamp is mostly light bulb. Same thing.
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Re: Chapstick owns the apologists on the Liahona

Post by Physics Guy »

So do you reject all claims of parallels between the Book of Mormon and real ancient cultures? Do any of those arguments from similarity have any weight at all, in your eyes? The real ancient things were all clearly different in significant ways from their supposed analogs in the Book of Mormon, after all.

I don't find those parallel arguments impressive, because I think it's quite easy to find similarities when you have the freedom to choose from many items on both sides of the equation and to define similarity in many ways. But the form of the argument is not just absurd, in my view. Things can be copied with adaptations. If the differences make sense as necessary adaptations to different circumstances, while the similarities have no obvious explanation except cultural continuity, then demonstrating the similarities is in principle valid evidence for cultural continuity, even in spite of the differences. If I find a restaurant with golden arches selling sushi and fries in Tokyo, I'm going to take that as evidence for American contact even though raw fish is not hamburger.

Exactly the same logic works for tracing modern sources of the Book of Mormon. It doesn't have to be a carbon copy to be drawn from a source.
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Re: Chapstick owns the apologists on the Liahona

Post by Gadianton »

Good explanations, Physics Guy, I totally agree, but don't let the accuser of our dear Reverend change the terms of engagement. Maybe we should have a friendly competition?

Who can come up with the best example of a likely literary borrowing where the underlying things described have nothing to do with each other? This should be an extreme example to show a very low bar was set to hop over. I'll go first:

It was a dark and stormy eye; gasses swirled within the giant planet, as it was checked by lightning bolts which electrified the dark red blight (for it is on Jupiter that our scene lies)...,
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Re: Chapstick owns the apologists on the Liahona

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Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 1:01 am
Go ahead, I’ll take a look.

- Doc
Bumping for Sledge to link the article he mentioned. I'll definitely take a look at it.

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
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Re: Chapstick owns the apologists on the Liahona

Post by Everybody Wang Chung »

Also bumping for Sledge.

Everybody Wang Chung wrote:
Fri May 07, 2021 2:56 am
“Sledge” wrote:
(I assume I do not need to link you to FAIR, who has dismantled this quite easily.)
Sledge,

This is the only article FAIR has on the topic. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/ans ... r%27%27%3F

Can you please point out in this article where FAIR has “dismantled” anything?
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Re: Chapstick owns the apologists on the Liahona

Post by Physics Guy »

I read a story once about giant blimp-creatures living in Jupiter. It might have been A Meeting with Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke, though at this point my memory is vague. I don't recall whether the red spot was a danger zone for the blimp-things or a favourite hang-out. A Bulwer-Lytton-esque melodrama on Jupiter would be awesome.

In googling to make sure I spelled this author's name right I discovered that Bulwer-Lytton is buried in Westminster Abbey and was apparently offered the throne of Greece in 1862. The Wikipedia page offers no explanation of how such a bizarre offer could have been made, nor any details about who exactly made the offer. The previous king had just abdicated, so I guess they had to find somebody, but if your king abdicates do you really just offer the job to random writers from other countries?

If Charles does a bunk when Queen Elizabeth dies I hope they don't call up George R.R. Martin. In a way he's an expert, sure, but.

Bulwer-Lytton declined. I'm not sure how good it really would have been to be king in 1862 Greece.
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