thestyleguy wrote:Many people who met Martin Harris said he was crazy. He said he saw the plates with his spiritual eyes which caused some early church leaders to leave the church - it was the last straw for them.
You reallyu don't know what you are talking about. You need to get the facts. Read Richard Lloyd Anderson's book on the Witnesses. You don't do any favors for the Critic Crowd when you make a post like that. It makes them all look stupid by association.
Martin was a credulous fellow. He had a wild imagination. Richard Lloyd Anderson can't really change the facts there.
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”
guy sajer wrote: And here's your miundestanding of how how scientific inquiry proceeds. We DON'T HAVE disprove the Book of Mormon, any more than we have to disprove the existence of leprechauns.
Also, we can test a number of separate hypotheses related to the Book of Mormon and from them form a pretty good comprehensive picture. It may not "prove" the Book of Mormon is false, but it comes pretty damn close.
You subscribe to the "fallacy of the magic bullet." This is the same fallacy political commentators make when arguing against various policy recommendations. They claim a policy won't work because it doesn't "solve" the problem. But that's not the question. The question is whether, at the magin, the policy solves certain aspects of the problem in a way that exceed its costs. No single policy will ever solve a major social or economic problem.
Similarly, whereas no single thing can necessarily "disprove" the Book of Mormon, several individual pieces of evidence can, at the margin, chip away at its veracity (and some of the chips are damned big chunks), leaving at the end, essentially, nothing or very little left.
I would like to hear what you call chunks. I have read a lot of attempts to chip away, but nothing has stood up. Do you have something new?
And here Charity's demonstrating the point--no amount of counter-evidence will disway her, she's not even willing to admit its evidence.
"Nothing has stood up." WTF. Do you really mean this?
There's not a single non-Mormon scientist anywhere on this planet in the relevant fields who would concede that ANY evidence exists for the civilizations described in the Book of Mormon.
Charity, you are living in a world of fantasy and delusion.
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."
thestyleguy wrote:Martin Harris denied he saw the gold plates with his natural eyes.
You don't know what you are talking about. On his death bed, Martin pointed to his eyes, his real eyes and said that he had seen the plates with "these eyes."
Many people who met Martin Harris said he was crazy. He said he saw the plates with his spiritual eyes which caused some early church leaders to leave the church - it was the last straw for them.
You reallyu don't know what you are talking about. You need to get the facts. Read Richard Lloyd Anderson's book on the Witnesses. You don't do any favors for the Critic Crowd when you make a post like that. It makes them all look stupid by association.
And one might say that your argument about evidence "not standing up" makes apologists look stupid by association. Granted, not a difficult task to accomplish.
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."
guy sajer wrote: "Nothing has stood up." (obscenity deleted). Do you really mean this?
There's not a single non-Mormon scientist anywhere on this planet in the relevant fields who would concede that ANY evidence exists for the civilizations described in the Book of Mormon.
Charity, you are leaving in a world of fantasy and delusion.
None of your anti-proofs have stood up. "We don't know of any evidence of this...." is a bucket full of holes. The proof will come when it comes. I can be patient.
guy sajer wrote: "Nothing has stood up." (obscenity deleted). Do you really mean this?
There's not a single non-Mormon scientist anywhere on this planet in the relevant fields who would concede that ANY evidence exists for the civilizations described in the Book of Mormon.
Charity, you are leaving in a world of fantasy and delusion.
None of your anti-proofs have stood up. "We don't know of any evidence of this...." is a bucket full of holes. The proof will come when it comes. I can be patient.
I repeat, Charity, you are delusional. I would feel comfortable offering this line of argument as corroborating proof.
Go on waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting . . . ..
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."
My testimony is not based on a few 'good feelings'. Others say that that is how they got it. I find this borderline unfathomable. I have no frame of reference to relate to that.
Well then, what do you base it on?
Visions?
Voices in your head?
According to the LDS paradigm, it is mainly feelings that confirm these things to us. And we know feelings can easily be self-induced.
“All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it...Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality." - Albert Einstein
No. The evidence that the person has had a witness of the Spirit is that they don't deny it, even if they become disaffected from the Church, inactive, whatever. The model for this are the witnesses to the Book of Mormon. Many of them did become disaffected. But none of them denied their witnesses, even when it would have been of financial and social benefit to themselves.
I just realized that this scenario applies to me. I have had a witness of the Spirit that I don't deny. I have become disaffected from the church and not active. According to your definition, I am evidence that the church is true. I fit the model and so do quite a few people on this board.
And if you want to modify your post by saying that people like you and me (who haven't hefted plates nor seen angels) don't fit "the model" because our witness is nothing like that had by the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, I would agree with you whole heartedly. You were the one who said they were "the model." I never hefted plates nor experienced an angelic presence, but I did have a witness of the Spirit.
If you don't believe that I did, what evidence do you have?
guy sajer wrote:I repeat, Charity, you are delusional. I would feel comfortable offering this line of argument as corroborating proof.
Go on waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting . . . ..
People who don't know shouldn't use term they don't understand. A delusion is a "false belief." You have to be able to PROVE that my belief is false. You can't provide that proof. All you can offer up is your belief.
amantha wrote:I just realized that this scenario applies to me. I have had a witness of the Spirit that I don't deny. I have become disaffected from the church and not active. According to your definition, I am evidence that the church is true. I fit the model and so do quite a few people on this board.
Of course, I accept your experience and your description of it.
amantha wrote:And if you want to modify your post by saying that people like you and me (who haven't hefted plates nor seen angels) don't fit "the model" because our witness is nothing like that had by the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, I would agree with you whole heartedly. You were the one who said they were "the model." I never hefted plates nor experienced an angelic presence, but I did have a witness of the Spirit.
I didn't mean that their experience was a model in that they saw angles, hefted the plates, etc. I meant it in the sense that they had a witness, they became disaffected, but they did not deny their witness. That was the model.
amantha wrote:If you don't believe that I did, what evidence do you have?
Like I said, I don't argue with your description of your experience.