Falsification of the Mormon Church

[_Tal Bachman]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints could be falsified if:


1. It could be shown in an unequivocal, empirical manner that Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead.

2. It could be shown in an unequivocal, empirical manner, that God does not exist.

3. It could be shown in an unequivocal, empirical manner, that the First Vision never occurred.

4. It could be shown in an unequivocal, empirical manner, that there is no life after death.

5. It could be shown in an unequivocal, empirical manner, that the witness of the Spirit is explainable
purely by mechanistic, neurobiological processes.

6. It could be shown in an unequivocal, empirical manner, that Book of Mormon peoples never existed.

We could go on and on, but what is the point? We've been arguing falsification with the secularists here since the beginning. What will be different about this thread?

Oh well. OK Tal, draw...

---This is a very silly post. I'm surprised.

For one thing, all six (with the possible exception of five) ask for a negative to be proven, something which for most people would be quite embarrassing to ask. Numbers one through three, for example, are basically equivalent to a Scientologist asking for proof that Xenu didn't really lead a force of galactic warriors 75 million years ago. Number six, as another example, is equivalent to asking that it be shown in an "unequivocal, empirical manner", that Jane Austen's characters never really existed, with the implication that if such proof of their non-existence can't be produced, it is just as likely as not that they were real. In epistemic terms, these questions are virtually meaningless.

Maybe most importantly, these are not specific falsifiability tests. All they are is versions of this statement: "if you prove that X never existed, then you will have proven that X never existed"; but this is just a mindless tautology.

Here is the question again:

What specific test would, or could, reliably falsify Mormonism?

Another way of putting it:

If Mormonism were a fraud, how would you know? How could you tell?

[_Coggins7]

1. We have clearly defined what a living thing is, as well what a dead thing is.

1. We have clearly defined what a living thing is, as well what a dead thing is.
2. We have established that thought and other living processes for higher organisms originate with the brain.
3. When a living thing dies, the brain will cease to function, producing no thought or other output; a dead thing has no thoughts.
4. All cellular activity, and any other living process associated with that living thing will cease.
5. The being will rot, and in a short time and the constitute parts will cease to be a recognizable whole.

Yes but, what does any of this have to do with whether or not individual existence and consciousness continues after the physical organism ceases metabolic processes?


T

he point of my post is that you are trying to open for debate things that rational, empirically based thought has already dismissed as not possible or unmeasurable.

Not only is the above statement patently false (science can establish nothing regarding that which it has no tools or methodology to observe and quantify), the sheer intellectual shallowness of it is really breathtaking. This is the same philosophical baby pool people like Dawkins wade in outside their tiny, materialist, reductionist niche.

2. We have established that thought and other living processes for higher organisms originate with the brain.

We have established no such thing, if by this you mean it has been established that thought is nothing more than a function of brain activity. We know that thought is associated with the brain and the parts of the brain where thoughts of various kinds appear to be generated. But if the brain is only a transducer for the mind, and not the mind itself, your entire argument falls apart. Unfortunately, neuroscience does not have, as you claim, anything to say empirically about what mind is or regarding its origin.

[_Coggins7]

Well, so far, Moksha and Seuss are the only ones here to have made a single intelligent comment. Tal is already backpedaling. This thread has at the outset attracted, as I feared, all the Momondiscussion.com garden pests who have no intention of carrying forth a serious, critical, creative, and philosophically sophisticated debate.

Tal: that's right, you are going to have to try to argue against negatives. If the First Vision never occurred, if Moroni never visited Joseph, if the Plates never existed, if revelation is purely biological, the Church is falsified.

Your problem here, of course, is that you have no faith in Jesus Christ; you are, not to put too fine a point on it, spiritually dead. Empirically, neither you nor I know if any of these things happened. But I do not accept empirical knowledge as the sole form of valid knowledge or empirical means as the sole means to attain it.


I need not justify my religious beliefs empirically, for a number of reasons, the least of which is there is no possibility of empirically ascertaining whether or not Stephen really saw Christ standing on the right hand of God as he died, or whether Joseph Smith actually translated an authentic ancient record. There are other means of ascertaining these things, but you have, of your own free will, separated yourself from those means. Others of us here have not. We can, and have, access to those means. You do not. You see Tal...you do not.

What is really going on here is that you have placed yourself, epistemologically, at such a radical distance from the means by which Gospel truths can be apprehended, that rational debate, which you say you crave, is, indeed, well nigh impossible for your because your definition of "rational" isn't just "critical thinking" but involves a bed of assumptions and boundaries that you demand others accept unquestioningly before you will enter into such debate.

You want Mormons to empirically justify this or that, when the Gospel, while not precluding such justification when possible, neither rises nor falls by empirical means. Much of the Gospel's empirical justification is, indeed, hidden from us, and this is, I'm convinced, a part of the plan and according to divine purpose. Much of our living of the Gospel is based in faith, and this is because we are here to be tried; this is a probationary state that is meant to be difficult, and provide precisely a confusing array of options, interpretations, and choices. The voice that "cries in the wilderness" is crying among a cacophony of other voices in an urban setting, in Babylon.

[_Sethbag]

All you've succeeded in doing, Coggins, is demonstrating that you don't believe that it is possible for the church to be falsified. It's disingenuous for you to claim otherwise, when you know full well that the only "falsifiable" questions you've set up are impossible because you are asking for a negative to be proven.

You've also asked questions essentially daring anyone to respond, when your very next comments are "neener neener neener, the subject matter of these questions is actually beyond rational discussion, because it concern things which I imagine to exist, and on whose existence science therefor, by definition, cannot have any input on whatsoever!"

I could replace you, Coggins, with a Scientology drone, and that person could say things like "I would leave Scientology if it were conclusively, and unequivocally shown that Emperor Xenu did not exist. I would leave Scientology if it were conclusively shown that thetans do not exist. I would leave Scientology if it were conclusively shown that LRH made up the OTIII Wall of Fire materials." It would be exactly the same thing.

You faith heads are like turtles, with your own, self-invented hard shells of logical defiance, into which you just suck your head and limbs when any danger shows up. You've thought yourselves into an unassailable corner.

Congratulations! You've not only been fooled by Joseph Smith, you've actually figured out how to fool yourself too. Religious frauds are genius at that. They lie to people, and people actually lie to themselves to get themselves to believe it, and to defend themselves against challenges to the lies.

[_wenglund]

This is a very silly post. I'm surprised.

For one thing, all six (with the possible exception of five) ask for a negative to be proven, something which for most people would be quite embarrassing to ask.

Are you suggesting that negatives are not falsifiable? If so, what about the negative assertion: "prove to me that the sun doesn't exist?"

If you rightly grant that there are some things that aren't falsifiable--at least in any practical sense of the word, then what does that mean to you in terms of believablity? In your mind, can one rationally believe things that aren't pragmatically falsifiable?

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_Coggins7]

All you've succeeded in doing, Coggins, is demonstrating that you don't believe that it is possible for the church to be falsified.

No I don't, but our biases were not in question. Tal wanted an extended, rational debate on the subject, and he has not so much a entered the arena.

It's disingenuous for you to claim otherwise, when you know full well that the only "falsifiable" questions you've set up are impossible because you are asking for a negative to be proven.

The only alternative to this, however, is attempting to prove a positive. One cannot show that Joseph did not experience the First Vision, then perhaps one could attempt to demonstrate, empirically, that he did experience it. Is that what you are getting at.

You've also asked questions essentially daring anyone to respond, when your very next comments are "neener neener neener, the subject matter of these questions is actually beyond rational discussion, because it concern things which I imagine to exist, and on whose existence science therefor, by definition, cannot have any input on whatsoever!"

I responded to Larson's Romper Room scientism by essentially dismissing it, which is all it deserves. His faith in what science can do and explain is no different than what you would consider to be my faith in the Priesthood.

I also pointed out to Tal that I am not going to play chess with him according to his own rules; I am not going to allow him to delimit me epistemologically or philosophically, which he is attempting to do at the outset. Much of the debate is going to revolve around notions of epistemology; about what knowledge is and how it can be known. Tal wants a strict fence placed around empiricism, outside of which no discussion is allowed.

This is why he finds it difficult to discuss anything with apologists.

I could replace you, Coggins, with a Scientology drone,

And I could replace you with Dawikins, but you probably have better hair...

You faith heads are like turtles, with your own, self-invented hard shells of logical defiance, into which you just suck your head and limbs when any danger shows up. You've thought yourselves into an unassailable corner.

When the intellectual ammo runs out, retreat to the Madalyn Murray O' Hair personal attacks on those of religious orientation as morons, dupes, and easily led sheep. This is all the more evidence that the central problem with "freethinkers" is that they aren't; they are trapped and conditioned within a rigid, intolerant belief system that constricts far more intellectual possibilities than it provides.

Congratulations! You've not only been fooled by Joseph Smith, you've actually figured out how to fool yourself too. Religious frauds are genius at that. They lie to people, and people actually lie to themselves to get themselves to believe it, and to defend themselves against challenges to the lies.

They also tend, as the above shows, to get trapped inside there own fevered and narcissistic thought worlds from which precincts it is very difficult to have a respectful discussion with someone who brings the unwelcome news that that thought world is not the only one, and is open to critique, even when wrapped in the swaddling clothes of "empirical".

[_Coggins7]

Hmmmm. Gad took me to the woodshed years ago on ZLMB for claiming that one cannot prove a negative with respect to the fundamental assertions of Atheism (atheists assert that God does not exist) saying that this is a fallacious attack on atheist thought.

Now Tal and Seth both claim here that one cannot.

The plot thickens...

[_Jersey Girl]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints could be falsified if:


1. It could be shown in an unequivocal, empirical manner that Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead.

2. It could be shown in an unequivocal, empirical manner, that God does not exist.

3. It could be shown in an unequivocal, empirical manner, that the First Vision never occurred.

4. It could be shown in an unequivocal, empirical manner, that there is no life after death.

5. It could be shown in an unequivocal, empirical manner, that the witness of the Spirit is explainable
purely by mechanistic, neurobiological processes.

6. It could be shown in an unequivocal, empirical manner, that Book of Mormon peoples never existed.


We could go on and on, but what is the point? We've been arguing falsification with the secularists here since the beginning. What will be different about this thread?

Oh well. OK Tal, draw...

Well, I would like you to go on and on. What else would it take?

[_Coggins7]

What Tal said he wanted, a serious, rational debate.

[_Jersey Girl]

What Tal said he wanted, a serious, rational debate.

Stop playing games with me, Loran.

What else would it take to falsify the Mormon Church?