The Nahom Follies

[_Chap]

As Chap keeps pointing out, we're in the realm of goddidit from the beginning.

There will be that divide between folks who take a purely naturalistic view of the world and those that see/look for the hand of God in His creations. When Chap says "goddidit", I'm assuming he's NOT saying that God did it ALL. I would rather look at is as a cooperative effort. Man and God.

That view makes world of difference when it comes to something like revelation, for example. Or Nephi building and launching a boat to the New World.

Regards,
MG

MG - we can stop arguing when you are prepared to sign up to a statement more or less equivalent to the following:

"(a) I agree that the story of Nephi's ship-building as narrated in the Book of Mormon, if regarded as a story of what ordinary people could have accomplished by the means likely to have been at their disposal under the specified circumstances, and absent miraculous intervention, is highly implausible.
(b) I, however, hold that the deity I believe in intervened and gave assistance that made Nephi and his companions able to build an ocean-going ship. That deity made possible what would have been more or less impossible without his aid."

I just want to see you separate those two clauses. It's the way you keep sliding from one to the other and fuzzing the boundary that I find displeasing to my perhaps overly fastidious sensibility.

[_I have a question]

I am not so locked into scriptural 'exactness' that I can not allow for Lehi and Co. to have carried some tools along with them.

In other words, you'll believe whatever you want about the narrative of the Book of Mormon regardless of what the narrative of the Book of Mormon actually says.

Do you think this phrase was included to explicitly point out that no tools were taken?

Regards,
MG

No, I think the phrase was given (by God, word for word) to explain that Lehi & Co. took nothing with them at all except for food, tents and each other.

[_mentalgymnast]

I am not so locked into scriptural 'exactness' that I can not allow for Lehi and Co. to have carried some tools along with them.

In other words, you'll believe whatever you want about the narrative of the Book of Mormon regardless of what the narrative of the Book of Mormon actually says.

Umm...no. I don't believe that Lehi and Co. ran into any Pink Unicorns on the way to Bountiful. The narrative doesn't say that there wasn't. So can't we implicitly surmise that there might have indeed been Pink Unicorns?

MG: Do you think this phrase was included to explicitly point out that no tools were taken?

IHAQ: No, I think the phrase was given (by God, word for word) to explain that Lehi & Co. took nothing with them at all except for food, tents and each other.

I didn't realize that you believed the Book of Mormon was/is the word of God.

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

...we can stop arguing...

I have no desire to argue with you. Am I coming across as being argumentative in a negative sense? I'm simply having a discussion. No harm, no foul.

I'm totally cool with agreeing to disagree.

Regards,
MG

[_mentalgymnast]

There will be that divide between folks who take a purely naturalistic view of the world and those that see/look for the hand of God in His creations.

No, the problem is you do what the church has taught you to do, which is that the spiritual testimony trumps all. This is why you don't go with the facts, and always look for any possibility no mater how bad that supports the church being true. This is why you will jump from should we see any evidence to God needs to hide the evidence. The only consistency is that the church needs to be true.

Aarrgh.

You're one of those folks that I'd love to sit down with face to face over lunch and get to know you...and have you get to know me.

It is what it is.

Regards,
MG

[_Themis]

Aarrgh.

You're one of those folks that I'd love to sit down with face to face over lunch and get to know you...and have you get to know me.

It is what it is.

Regards,
MG

LOL Perhaps I am a bit more blunt then many others like Brad in saying the same thing. I think his post was one of the best that describes the apologist and skeptic.

[_Chap]

MG - we can stop arguing when you are prepared to sign up to a statement more or less equivalent to the following:

"(a) I agree that the story of Nephi's ship-building as narrated in the Book of Mormon, if regarded as a story of what ordinary people could have accomplished by the means likely to have been at their disposal under the specified circumstances, and absent miraculous intervention, is highly implausible.

(b) I, however, hold that the deity I believe in intervened and gave assistance that made Nephi and his companions able to build an ocean-going ship. That deity made possible what would have been more or less impossible without his aid."

I just want to see you separate those two clauses. It's the way you keep sliding from one to the other and fuzzing the boundary that I find displeasing to my perhaps overly fastidious sensibility.

...we can stop arguing...

I have no desire to argue with you. Am I coming across as being argumentative in a negative sense? I'm simply having a discussion. No harm, no foul.

I'm totally cool with agreeing to disagree.

Regards,
MG

I do not use the word 'argue' to mean 'quarrel'

I simply mean that if you were to agree that (a) and (b) basically describe your position (which I suspect they do), then I don't need to take up your time with further discussion of this topic. I don't of course believe (b) myself.

[_honorentheos]

The balancing of the scales, the recalibration, the weights coming off or being added, happen between the input and the output. I am continually going back to the scales and observing whether or not the scale has become top heavy on the side of questions/doubts. At times it is. It is at those times that I go back and reevaluate...empty the scales as much as I mentally can...reset the scale to zero (see that I am obtaining my information from varied sources, pro and con), then go back and continue the investigation/journey. Up to this point I've been able to avoid the "straw that breaks the camel's back", so to speak, and keep the fulcrum from going too far from one side or the other of the weight bearing structure so as to remain balanced and objective somewhere in the middle.

Hi mg,

I'm curious if you realize what you wrote above: That you are doing exactly what the visual of the lever and fulcrum describes.

Are you not saying that your objective is to keep the lever in a state of equilibrium? And when you are examining evidence (adding weight) and it starts to seem like you are getting out of balance (the evidence begins to overcome the willingness to believe Joseph Smith was a prophet) you take a step back and adjust the fulcrum to restore the equilibrium? You describe it as keeping the fulcrum going too far from one side or the other, but state your objective is to maintain balance. In other words, you are using your willingness to believe Joseph Smith was a prophet as the fulcrum over which the evidence is balanced.

How does that comport with the idea one is seeking for truth? It would seem your goal isn't about weighing evidence but simply being able to offset it somehow. Why?

[_honorentheos]

As Chap keeps pointing out, we're in the realm of goddidit from the beginning.

There will be that divide between folks who take a purely naturalistic view of the world and those that see/look for the hand of God in His creations. When Chap says "goddidit", I'm assuming he's NOT saying that God did it ALL. I would rather look at is as a cooperative effort. Man and God.

That view makes world of difference when it comes to something like revelation, for example. Or Nephi building and launching a boat to the New World.

Regards,
MG

I think what Chap is saying is the story requires the supernatural both by it's own description with the boat being built according to the design of God, and by the fact the building of a boat capable of transporting a reasonably sized group of people from the Old World to the New in 600 BCE would be the very bleeding edge of ship building technology having skipped a generation or five of natural advancement. I don't see Chap saying God did it all or even most. It's just that you can't also say God did nothing, so you have a serious x-factor in the narrative.

Once you have God doing anything, it becomes questionable why one chooses to reach beyond the narrative to try and explain details like: Where did the wood come from? What kind of tools might Nephi and co. have brought from home? How much money did they keep and bring with them after they supposedly gave it all to Laban having noted they didn't bring Lehi's wealth with them?

The narrative already says if something is inexplicable then insert God. Whether it's a dash of God here or there or you dump in the Costco family-sized Tub o' God is kinda irrelevant.

[_mentalgymnast]

The balancing of the scales, the recalibration, the weights coming off or being added, happen between the input and the output. I am continually going back to the scales and observing whether or not the scale has become top heavy on the side of questions/doubts. At times it is. It is at those times that I go back and reevaluate...empty the scales as much as I mentally can...reset the scale to zero (see that I am obtaining my information from varied sources, pro and con), then go back and continue the investigation/journey. Up to this point I've been able to avoid the "straw that breaks the camel's back", so to speak, and keep the fulcrum from going too far from one side or the other of the weight bearing structure so as to remain balanced and objective somewhere in the middle.

Hi mg,

I'm curious if you realize what you wrote above: That you are doing exactly what the visual of the lever and fulcrum describes.

Are you not saying that your objective is to keep the lever in a state of equilibrium? And when you are examining evidence (adding weight) and it starts to seem like you are getting out of balance (the evidence begins to overcome the willingness to believe Joseph Smith was a prophet) you take a step back and adjust the fulcrum to restore the equilibrium? You describe it as keeping the fulcrum going too far from one side or the other, but state your objective is to maintain balance. In other words, you are using your willingness to believe Joseph Smith was a prophet as the fulcrum over which the evidence is balanced.

That's pretty close.

How does that comport with the idea one is seeking for truth?

That's actually a bit difficult to put into words. When one has been "fully invested" in Mormonism and it's in the DNA, so to speak, there is a hard wiring of sorts that keeps the 'program' running. It is difficult to step outside of the program that is running internally to look at things externally. If you combine elements of the Matrix and The Truman Show with a dash/pinch of fantasy that is in/part of so many of the shows we've seen growing up, one might see how a person is not truly 'themselves' but a product of their programming/environment.

When one finds and/or comes across different 'apps' or software programs...alternate ways of viewing the original program and/or hard wiring (new Mormon history)...they don't seem to run very well on the old OS . They may not even run at all or seem buggy. The potential for a system crash is a real concern. Now, let it be said, the hard wiring and/or original programming may be 'true' in the absolute sense, but it is objectively difficult to know one way or the other, because I'm looking at the inside from the inside rather than being able to look in from the outside without any interference from the original program/hard wiring which as been running for so long.

So truth...and all of the more up to date apps and software (with new information/coding) becomes something that I can observe, even objectively to some extent, while I'm within the operational structures/strictures of the program...living inside the Matrix or living as an actor or stand-in on The Truman Show...but the 'looping' process that occurs as the original programming often re-manifests itself (original code) over and over again and results in what seems to be a subjective experience of a 'core feeling' (that's always been there) that there's nothing that can beat the original programming and/or hardwiring. It's run well, it works, and it plays well with all of the other machines that are in the room and haven't received updates or new software and are running just fine.

So truth, in some respects, is relative. Operating systems, software, matrix, staging, and relatives. It (truth) becomes relative(s).

It would seem your goal isn't about weighing evidence but simply being able to offset it somehow. Why?

If that does happen, it is a result of original programming and old software. It's funny, we can make these analogies/comparisons to machines created by humans, but it is difficult to take the machine language out of the human. Every one of us lives within a similar frame of reference. We can only observe the world from where we are. We can make efforts to be objective, and even succeed, but we are still prone to defaults in our original core 'main frame' and everything that is inside that large cabinet...thinking back to the days of large main frames that filled rooms...

Anyway, that might help a bit. The fulcrum is readjusted to account for or bring into alignment key 'coding', programming, and hardwiring . i.e., The Book of Mormon is keystone. God exists. Jesus is Savior. Good and Evil/opposition/testing. Accountability. Prophets. Judeo-Christian history connections with the modern world. God is love and families are forever. Prayer works. Apostasy from truth. Atonement.

Again, let it be said, I am totally open to the possibility that my original programming/hardwiring is based on absolute/eternal truth...but I fully realize that I am not looking at the world with the same kind/brand of objectivity that someone else might bring to the table. That's why I actually enjoy hearing the perspectives of others who are also sharing their views that have come, at least partially, from their own hardwired/programmed life experience.

Can any of us be truly objective? Are we not all subject to subjectivity? Are we not all living within our own Matrix/Truman Show?

The challenge is to somehow step out of that 'built in' native programming and objectively look at the other apps and software that make systems run smoothly. I think, at least to some extent, I've been able to do so.

That's why when some folks, Themis for example, try to reduce folks...well, me anyways, to some kind of unthinking automaton or morgbot I exclaim: Aarrgh!

Although he is partially on target...as you can see from what I've tried to lay out in this post. He probably thinks he needs to educate me on what is going on internally inside my head.

I think I have it pretty well figured out.

Regards,
MG