My Life Was Saved by the Book of Mormon! A Philosophy Problem.

[_Gadianton]

This is in the right forum, it's an off-topic exercise clothed in LDS terms. I'm in the process of digesting this problem's ramifications in my spare time, and I'm curious what kind of angle some of the folks here will tackle it from. My second post will have the problem itself if you wan't to just skip to that. Note a few preliminaries:

1) If I've framed this problem right, then it's a philosophical problem, not a straightforward logic or science problem with a clear answer. Some very smart people thoroughly trained in all the above would no doubt debate the outcome. Your initial intuition might be that this is the kind of stupid thing philosophers are interested in and easily solved by common sense and some basic knowledge of science. The cool thing, though, is that it's the kind of problem that helps one understand what a philosophical problem is, and the difficulties of describing basic features of the world consistently and clearly even with all the tools of logic and science that we have at our disposal.

2) This problem is my own adaption of a more well-known problem which packs a better punch that I will reveal later, but I'd like those interested to take it on themselves first before doing the keyword searches. I will credit my sources appropriatly later, after those interested have given it a good go. I'd like to ask those who have discovered the "real problem" I'm taking this from to not be a buzz-kill and just PM me if you want to see if you're right.

3) This post will likely be very unpopular. I usually don't bother moderators for anything, but I will bug moderators to move the posts here that are too off topic. Since I'm simultaneously making fun of the church, I'm open to dismissive, irrelevant, and cheap-shot comments, but only if the poster as well takes a crack at answering the question. So if you have a penchant for humorous comments and your handle starts with a "M" or "N" especially, please be advised.

[_Gadianton]

You are a member of the LDS church and attend a ward in Provo UT primarily populated by highly intelligent physicists, chemists, and logicians who teach at BYU. Every Sunday you attend church wearing a white shirt and tie just as the prophet recommends. Your white shirt has a pocket, and in that pocket you keep a small Book of Mormon. As everyone is truthfully led to believe by the apologists, the Mormons are the most persecuted people on the planet. So it's not surprising then that as you exit the chapel one Sunday afternoon, a cowardly sniper, probably an anti-Mormon who posts anonymously on MDB, shoots you down. You wake up in the hospital sometime later to learn that the bullet had wedged itself into the Book of Mormon you carry in your front pocket, saving your life.

The next Sunday being Fast Sunday, you stand before the congregation and bear testimony that the Book of Mormon saved your life. The congregation as a Mormon sample with an average IQ only rivaled by the self-stated values of apologists on FAIR/MAD listen intently to your description of the sequence of events and seem uncontroversially to accept your account that the Book of Mormon saved your life.

Later that day, a concerned Elder's quorum president advises that you start bringing a Bible as well as a Book of Mormon to Sunday meetings. Knowing that his voice is God's voice for his stewardship, you heed his request, and begin bringing a small Bible to church, craming it behind the Book of Mormon in your front pocket.

On your way out of church a couple Sundays later, again, a sneaky anti-Mormon shoots you down. You wake up in the hospital to find that yet again, the bullet had wedged itself into the Book of Mormon and stopped just before Moroni's promise. So the next fast Sunday, again, you stand before the congregation and bear testimony that the Book of Mormon saved your life. But this time there are hushed whispers, concerned looks, turning heads, and shrugging shoulders. They don't seem to be buying it. Why not?

[_Moniker]

So if you have a penchant for humorous comments and your handle starts with a "M" or "N" especially, please be advised.

Well, I have a penchant for irrelevant comments... but I thought I'd give this a *bump*. I've been ogling it for a while now and didn't want to be the first dummy to type anything.

But, alas, I am. :)

[_asbestosman]

I honestly don't understand the problem. I can offer speculative answers, but none of them seem particularly insightful. I wonder what role the Bible played in things from the congregation's POV. I wonder if having the Book of Mormon shot twice has anything to do with it--the first shot may have disturbed the book thus making it a "corrupted Book of Mormon so the second shot may not have been protected by it.

[_Moniker]

Okay, well, this isn't insightful either... but I'm going to mention something. If he's advised to put the Bible in his front pocket as well (from the "voice of God" no less), and yet it turns out that it was entirely unnecessary, then that makes God look like a bit of a numbskull -- cause all he needed was the Book of Mormon and the Bible offered no protection at all.

[_Gadianton]

I honestly don't understand the problem. I can offer speculative answers, but none of them seem particularly insightful. I wonder what role the Bible played in things from the congregation's POV. I wonder if having the Book of Mormon shot twice has anything to do with it--the first shot may have disturbed the book thus making it a "corrupted Book of Mormon so the second shot may not have been protected by it.

crap, I just lost my whole response. So for now. let's say you're in a tank (not a fish tank, the WWII kind). outside of the tank is a flimsy wood post. a .22 caliber has line of sight to your heart, it fires, the post deflects the bullet enough so that it is not in the path of your body. did the flimsy piece of wood save your life?

[_asbestosman]

crap, I just lost my whole response. So for now. let's say you're in a tank (not a fish tank, the WWII kind). outside of the tank is a flimsy wood post. a .22 caliber has line of sight to your heart, it fires, the post deflects the bullet enough so that it is not in the path of your body. did the flimsy piece of wood save your life?

Ah, now I think I see where this is going. If the wood hadn't been there, the tank would have deflected the shot anyhow. Yet, the wood was what deflected the shot, not the tank. Did the wood save my life? I would say that it did. While the tank would have saved me if the wood wasn't there, the wood would have saved me if the tank wasn't there. The wood was what actually saved me in this case.

I also see a difference between this case and the Book of Mormon / Bible story. In the latter, both books are put in the pocket for the purpose of protection by the target. In the case of the tank, it would seem that the tank was expressly used for protection, but the wood post simply protected him by chance as it was not put in place with the intent to protect his life.

[_Gadianton]

Now mount a Book of Mormon on the stick, would the deflection by the Book of Mormon, given that you were in a tank, or how about a steel enclosure for no apparent reason, constitute a life save and would it make a very good faith promoting story?

[_The Nehor]

I personally think these kinds of stories (as I've actually heard them) is silly. It's a kind of relic protection. It could just as easily been a kevlar vest, a white handbook, your wallet, or your checkbook. If God chooses to save your life does it really matter which object does it? Remember Marriott's story about being burned up to the garment line? By this definition we are all doing ourselves a tremendous disservice by not wearing the old ankle/wrist garments as it would have prevented those burns.

[_Gadianton]

I personally think these kinds of stories (as I've actually heard them) is silly. It's a kind of relic protection. It could just as easily been a kevlar vest, a white handbook, your wallet, or your checkbook. If God chooses to save your life does it really matter which object does it? Remember Marriott's story about being burned up to the garment line? By this definition we are all doing ourselves a tremendous disservice by not wearing the old ankle/wrist garments as it would have prevented those burns.

Yes, it matters which object does it, because if we can't pinpoint an object that does it, then we can't very well say that God did any saving by putting it there. But the overdetermination seems to put our intuitions about the scene into incompatibilities.