Decent Post on Proof and Evidence at Sic et Non

[Guest]

8 witnesses

1. Shown
2. hefted
3. have the appearance of gold
4. handled all the translated leaves
5. engravings appeared ancient & curious

When?
Where?
Who was present at any one time?
How long were they together?
What was said?
Mental state?
Lighting conditions?
When was the testimony reduced to writing?
Who wrote it?
Was it signed?
Who signed it?
When signed?
Who was present when it was signed?
Any explanation regarding the original?
Any evidence as to the original?
What was the relationship of each alleged signator with Joseph Smith?
Did anyone else see the plates?
What is the evidence that others saw the plates?
What was the motive for having the document prepared as the 8 testimony?
Are such plates within the usual experiences of people?
What was the alleged provenance of the plates?
Is such provenance within the usual experiences of people?

Such would be a good start.

[Guest]

I have experience much inner peace since putting whyme on ignore. Others who contribute only repetitive and diversionary posts can be treated the same way.

Incidentally, has anyone noticed the change in stemelbow's prose in some recent posts? It seems that his eagerness to respond to posters like Kishkumen has caused him to forget to apply his usual folksy filter. Now we get complex sentences, normally spelled, and in some cases using quite subtle phrasings.

That increases my sense that what we have here is an intelligent LDS poseur, who has been attempting to use the 'Hey! I ain't nuttin'.' persona of stemelbow to increase the noise to signal ratio on the board, and hence reduce the effectiveness of threads that deal with subjects he finds uncongenial.

I said essentially the same thing a few pages ago in this thread. I in fact have stemelbow on ignore, but I'm responding to some of the things he is saying in this thread because they actually pertain to the OP. That is, we are getting a real-time example of how LDS internet warriors deal with difficult evidentiary problems in the faith-promoting narrative. And the answer is, extremely poorly.

Stemelbow's preferred strategy is to play the game Chap has described above. This game is self-defeating, however, because it comes off very badly for the faith that stemelbow mistakenly sees himself as defending. Rather than disrupting---and therefore ending---troublesome criticism of his cherished beliefs that he is not equipped to refute, stemelbow is only drawing attention to how derailing and trolling is all that he and many of his compatriots have. He cannot deal with the substance.

When the "pep pep, nuthin' much" strategy does not appear to be going his way, stemelbow tries to give the appearance of being serious, but he is merely mischaracterizing facts, making fatuous and fallacious interpretations of evidence, and misrepresenting what other people have said.

I have not counted how many times stemelbow has continued to say that "even DJ, an avowed critic, has to admit that Joseph Smith had some plates that had writing on them and looked ancient" (paraphrasing). I explicitly said a couple of pages that I do not concede that, because there is no foundation for that claim. As I have already said, the Eight Witnesses could not possibly have known if the etchings on the plates they saw were in reality actual written characters of a non-English language. They had no ability to corroborate Joseph Smith's claim that he had plates with "writing" on them. To help explain what I mean, let's have a visual:



Would the believing Mormons perusing the board agree that there is actual "writing" on the plates seen above, or is it more like there are etchings that have been made to look like writing? Similarly, would you agree that the plates above "appear to be ancient"? Or were they crafted to have the appearance of what unqualified people would assume ancient metal plates would look like? Unless you have some training in archaeology, how would you know what "ancient" plates would look like? How would Joseph Smith, Sr. et al. know? (Note also that the faith-promoting narrative tells us that all of the Eight Witnesses already believed Joseph Jr.'s story before they were shown these plates---a fine tribute to self-referentialism if ever there was one.)

So besides stemelbow actively misrepresenting what facts I am not disputing, he is also misrepresenting the claim at issue. Nobody cares whether Joseph Smith just had metal plates and that's it. I've never been at fast and testimony meeting and heard, "I know with every fiber of my being that Joseph Smith had some metal plates. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." If that's really all that the Eight Witnesses had to say, then their testimony is irrelevant to the Book of Mormon. But stemelbow keeps simultaneously admitting and denying that the testimony of the Eight Witnesses is supposed to be circumstantial evidence that the Book of Mormon is true. The LDS Church itself touts the testimony of the Eight Witnesses as evidence that the Book of Mormon is true. Yet as with Joseph Smith then and the LDS Church now, Mormons are not really interested in evidence-based rationality. They just want to create the illusion of evidence-based rationality. The Church also conditions its members to believe that the sleight of hand they have been shown by things like the testimony of the Eight Witnesses is compelling, valid evidence that the faith-promoting narrative is grounded in objective reality. That's why LDS internet warriors like stemelbow cannot surrender anything to the merciless pagan deities of Foundation and Relevance.

Let's watch and see if stemelbow ever admits that the facts and circumstances of how the testimony of the Eight Witnesses was procured is evidence (but not proof!) that the Book of Mormon is a hoax---or if he continues to axiomatically insist no, if he can explain why not.

ETA: Will stemelbow admit that the existence of a substantial sealed portion of the plates alleged to be the actual Book of Mormon is consistent with making it easier to forge a prop because there's a lot less etching to do?

EDITS: I hate typos.

[_Darth J]

DCP could be the worst scholar in the world and come up with all sorts of terrible arguments and ideas and it wouldn't hurt a sole.

A sole what?

[_Kishkumen]

It wasn't naked. I provided the explanation. You quoted my first sentence and ignored the rest, it seems.

You provided the same crap that you have repeated numerous times now. We have shown it to be false, and yet you persist. This is clear evidence of trolling behavior.

[_Darth J]

And in the wake of all of this, you turn the discussion to a complaint about me. have fun.

I agree with you stem. Kish is doing too much attacking as opposed to focusing on the issues. You aren't the issue.

Marg, the next time a crazy street preacher harasses you and follows you around yelling in your face about the end of the world, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for the police officer to whom you complain to say, "Stop complaining about him. The issue is the end of the world, not this guy."

[_Darth J]

Nobody in New York would have heard of Roger's Rangers. [/url]

"Északnyugati átjáró"
Northwest Passage of Kenneth Roberts.

I have the book in Hungarian.

I was being sarcastic, Ludwigm.

[_Darth J]

I clearly disagree and I don't think you nor anyone has made a very good case for that at all. It is quite clear the 8 testified of seeing the plates. That they said Joseph Smith was a translator was not to testify they know he translated. That they said the plates were translated, does not mean they testified they know the translation was true.

Stemelbow, from now on I want you to join with me and the rest of the board in referring to Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844) as "Joseph Smith, the Child Molester." Joseph Smith has been called a child molester by some people because of his relationship with teenage girls such as Helen Mar Kimball.

We're not making any claims; we just want to identify who we're talking about. So from this point forward, for the simple purpose of identification, we're all going to refer to the founder of Mormonism as "Joseph Smith, the Child Molester."

Will you agree to this? If not, why not?

[_Gadianton]

The leader of Heaven's Gate had a photo of Hale Bopp with a trailing white dot. The trailing dot was the spaceship of one of the Heaven's Gate leaders from several years prior who had moved to the next level after fighting cancer. Now, Stem, one might conclude without that photo that Hale Bopp approached not alone, but with that photo, the evidence mounts that much more. That photo was/is a piece of data. It is evidence positive for the case that Hale Bopp traveled with an intelligent, space-faring companion.

That comes off as pretty silly. Joseph Smith' claim of having metallic plates is not near a comparison to this. The question is did Joseph Smith have metallic plates that appeared ancient with writings on them? DJ says yes. he simply doesn't realize the reason he's forced to say yes, is because, in part, the evidence that is supplied by the testimony of the 8.

See ya.

The question is whether the leader of heaven's gate had a photo with a white dot that appeared to follow closely behind hale bopp.

His claim to have such a picture is more ordinary than Joseph Smith claim to have metal plates with ancient writing on them.

My question to you is, did the leader of heavens gate have such a picture? There are at least 25 witnesses that say he did.

[_lulu]

Did the 8 ever make any statements outside of the "Testimony of the 8 Witnesses" regarding seeing the plates?

[_Kishkumen]

Did the 8 ever make any statements outside of the "Testimony of the 8 Witnesses" regarding seeing the plates?

Yes. You could consult Anderson's book on the witnesses, which is available for a reasonable price through Amazon.